(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Page Hamilton, a native of Oregon and a jazz music graduate, honed his skills in Glenn Branca’s ensembles before becoming the guitarist for the Band Of Susans. Toward the end of 1989, he recruited John Stanier (drums), Henry Bogdan (bass), and Peter Mengede (guitar, ex-New Christs) and formed Helmet. The single Born Annoying / Rumble introduced them as the natural heirs to the deafening cacophonies of Big Black, but it was the album Strap It On (Amphetamine Reptile, 1990) that made them a sensation.
Repetition opens the album with a brutal sound, continuous and piercing noise, a You Really Got Me-style riff (Kinks) blasted at ear-shattering decibels, and a butcher-like solo (the only kind that can be heard in that inferno). Sinatra, with its maelstrom of Sonic Youth-style dissonances pushed to the extremes of Glenn Branca’s symphonies, expresses the intellectual side of their project; while Rude, the quintessence of the “Helmet sound” (psychotic, manic vocals, superhuman riffs, slow, stuttering cadence), conveys the same aesthetic from a perspective of unrefined barbarity. The line between intellectual and criminal blurs in Helmet’s sonic universe.
The total chaos of FBLA, the imposing walls of Distracted, and especially the ramshackle dissonances of Murder constitute the fundamental syntax of this extremely degraded language. Bad Moon is their version of a tribal dance, driven by a torrential impulse, a murderous march without pause. Blacktop and Make Room are the more “musical” tracks, where a discernible structure emerges.

The secret of this agonizing, hideous music lies less in the cataclysms of the guitars (which take the ideas of Prong and Sonic Youth to their extremes) than in a singer who doesn’t even try to sing and one of the greatest drummers around, agile and chameleon-like as Tony Williams, aggressive and irregular as Bill Bruford, capable of forcing a 4/4 into the odd meters favored by Hamilton—a drummer who invented a new style based on booming sonorities.

When Meantime (Interscope, 1992) was released, the curse of Big Black (that they could never have disciples) seemed to strike again: guitarists Mengede and Hamilton toned down the frequency of their distortions, showing once more how the record industry can kill an artistic case at birth. The infernal pace slows, and the vocals normalize in radio-ready tracks like In The Meantime (a worthy continuation of Blacktop) and Unsung (with the riff from Prong’s Beg To Differ), certainly less hostile than the first album. The sound remains dense and cavernous, dark and suffocating. He Feels Bad is the manifesto of the existential malaise from which their brutal sound originates, and Ironhead best exemplifies their erudite counterpoint.

After losing Mengede (who formed Handsome) and hiring rhythm guitarist Rob Echevarria (ex-Rest In Pieces), Page Hamilton tried to change the pace of his werewolf band with Betty (Interscope, 1994), but the transformation was not particularly successful: Biscuits For Smut (without bass) and especially Tic (bulldozer-like feedback flows) form the wall of power, but it is the apocalyptic blues of Sam Hell (which Jon Spencer would enjoy) that emerges almost triumphantly over the dark magma of the rest. The sound remains anchored to brutal half-track riffs, a geometrically cold rhythm section, and the most monotonous vocals in music history. Hamilton was probably attempting not to make an album but an erudite lesson in avant-garde grunge. His doctrine is based on two principles: the supremacy of “groove” over solos (as demonstrated in the power-pop of Speechless) and the use of unusual time signatures (see Vaccination). In short, this guitar-driven rock ultimately relies more on the rhythm section than on the guitar.

Attacked from both right and left by imitators like Tool and Korn, Helmet retreated into an album much more conventional and melodic than the experimental Betty. After also losing Echevarria, briefly replaced by Chris Traynor (ex-Orange 9mm), Hamilton recorded Aftertaste (Interscope, 1997) with only the rhythm section of Henry Bogdan and John Stanier. They are responsible for their sound for better or worse: since the beginning, their simple geometric patterns have been one of the band’s trademarks (and in this version, certainly one of the most boring and predictable in rock history), but at the same time they are responsible for all the originality the band has achieved (especially on Betty), because Helmet’s originality has so far been evident only in the “grooves” and time signatures. Hamilton deserves recognition for his consistency in avoiding solos: his guitar is mere filler, a background sound, almost never a leading voice. The melodies are, as always, shockingly meager.
There is therefore little to say about Renovation, It's Easy To Get Bored, and Visibility, regal grunge tracks but lacking personality. This is the heavy-metal equivalent of supermarket music, background music, music not meant to be listened to. The syncopations of Exactly What You Wanted represent one of the group’s commercial peaks.
Unsung made them heroes, and these songs are descendants of Unsung. After attempting to free himself from the stereotype he created, Hamilton realized he would only have a future as long as that stereotype had a market.
Strap It On remains a milestone in rock, but Helmet did little to dispel the impression that they arrived there by sheer chance, much like Columbus discovering America while thinking he had discovered something else entirely.