Helmet
Size Matters

THE REVIEW

If size really mattered, as the title of the new work by Page Hamilton & Co. suggests, we could easily dub this album as the mountain giving birth to a mouse.

Despite an overwhelming number of decibels, the Helmet offers us the results of a tired work devoid of any valid spark. Listening to Size Matters almost causes a shock; we are indeed facing a record created by a man imprisoned by his own past. The embarrassing similarities with the old works – especially with the second album "Meantime" (1992) – have not prevented Hamilton from wreaking havoc on his own artistic credibility.

If the final result equaled or at least approached what had already been said in the past, we might even turn a blind eye; but here we need to close both ears! The noise lesson from Sonic Youth, after being effectively taken to the extreme with the first records, seems to resolve itself into a mannerism that irreparably damages this "Size Matters."

The search for the easy chorus, starting from the first single "See You Dead" (very similar in its progression to "No One Knows" by Queens Of The Stone Age), leads Helmet nowhere. Perhaps Hamilton should be warned that, alongside referring to oneself and copying what is currently in vogue, there is a third way not to be dismissed offhand: that of not producing records if there is nothing to say.