Helmet
Meantime

THE REVIEW

The best way to listen to "Meantime" is to place yourself right in the middle of two monolithic three-way JBL speakers and let the amplifier levels spill into the red. Your own will becomes clouded by the violent representation executed by the New York quartet led by guitarist Page Hamilton. The funny thing is that Atlantic had pulled them from Amphetamine Reptile and signed them in 1992 (the grunge era) thinking they had the next big thing in the Nirvana-Nevermind style.

What idiots these record executives! Page Hamilton had absolutely nothing to appeal to the flannel generation, his masters were the great noise masturbators of the bleak everyday nightmare of the eighties, the early Swans or Sonic Youth. He, however, goes further, approaching the boundaries of metal that the Beast created by Michael Gira had not dared to approach: Helmet does not present the indeterminacy or the self-indulgence of those forefathers. This band is ruthless in rejecting captivating embellishments, they are surgical in controlling their aggressive anger, therefore they know how-where-when to strike, which nerve to expose, and how to regulate blood flow to the arteries without causing an aneurysm. The beauty is that you enjoy this self-destructive game, the tons of riffs they unload on you are so granite and edgy that, from the center of the JBL speakers, you find yourself catapulted with shocking realism onto the streets of the Big Apple, breathing the suffocating gusts of steam rising from clogged manholes.

Ten livid-colored candies with a devastating effect due to the bulldozer guitars maneuvered by Page Hamilton and Peter Mengede and the pneumatic drills in the hands of the Bogdan/Stanier duo, an impressive wall of annihilating riffs of direct Sabbath-inspired origin filtered through the noisily contemporary mind of Glenn Branca's brilliant student. He also echoes Ozzy in the most melodic (so to speak) track of the lot, that "Unsung" which would be used in the 2000s by video game creators. Elsewhere there's panic embedded in the stop and go commanded by John Stanier's snare in tracks like "Ironhead" or in "Give it", in the tons of molten metal spewed from the blast furnace that spits out the opener "In the Meantime", in the scorching and rare guitar solo that leaves a roaring echo in the cathartic silence of the splendid "Turned Out".

And so it seems that in 1992 the promising platinum egg-laying hen instead laid fireballs that were not easily digestible by the general public, but perhaps Page Hamilton & Co.'s problem was presenting themselves with any old look: no ripped jeans or flannel shirts dear to the grunge generation, not even the long dreadlocks like Zack De La Rocha that enchanted rows of kids. These guys, with their baseball caps and short hair, anonymous t-shirts, and nerdy shorts, without even taking a bite out of a bat's head, it was unthinkable that they had balls so big as to turn you inside out in a washing machine like a sock, then hang you out to dry with the rest of the laundry, underwear included, in eager anticipation of the next spin cycle.

An seminal album to listen to on continuous loop, at least until the firefighters arrive, called by the usual cranky neighbor.