•
Rating:
We are in 1990, Helmet, led by Page Hamilton, after practicing noise in Glenn Branca's Sick Ensembles, releases its first and never again equaled masterpiece, "Strap It On".
Everything blends perfectly, the adrenaline and subversive charge of tracks like "Rude" and "FBLA" reach the peaks of a music without pauses, a significant demonstration of power and an overload of negative energy.
Sequence of feedback planed into noise follow each other in discharges of decibels in constant evolution, forming an impenetrable wall in which one can drown.
Leading it all is Hamilton's junkie voice, which will never again reach such atrocities in subsequent albums. Big Black and Unsane as terms of comparison, strong doses of hardcore and noise, superhuman cadences, and more make this album a caterpillar of desolate alienation. There is no melody, there is no light suddenly turning on, there is no lifeline to cling to. Only darkness.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Repetition (03:02)
Admire myself
Pass offers of great sex
No threat the evil goes
Gone
Pig Fuck your eyes wide
Once lead, gone shy
Not a thing in common
She looks just like a boy
Boy
02 Rude (04:15)
Dragged behind someone like habit
Say complete, say sycophantic
Rude
Suffocate won't let you breathe
Could be worse I might never leave
Rude
03 Bad Mood (02:17)
It's no bad mood
It's a look you thought might kill but
You knew better
Wake up cold
Do you know you're not dead
Make the same mistake
You've lost your head
Rearrange events again
Let them suit your next complaint
Self-absorbed
You're all wrapped up
So deep inside
Just think bland thoughts
04 Sinatra (04:33)
I can't move her
Obsessed with protection
This is a bad idea
She needs affection
What, me?
Drive around town forced to talk
Pass that church again
Where's a parking spot
It's Sinatra's world
She just lives here
I hate everything as much as
I hate me
What's the best for me?
She doesn't see me
I don't care
Just move around some and
Fix your stare
I had more fun
Took half the time
Cost three bucks, buy a magazine
What's the best for me?
05 FBLA (02:42)
Sympathetic
The angry and young
Fellowship did stress virile and
So well hung
Down and right
Did it wrong
Self-obsessed
Time to kill you're so depressed
Presence that won't
Complicate
06 Blacktop (03:23)
Your self control might be a muscle spasm
New direction isn't everlasting though
Grope for straws you've got to plan
This week
Then the crutch dissolves
When she walks too sweet
Ration of blacktop on the slope of
Nowhere
Came out to greet the unresponsive
Stare
Turn green with envy over something
You missed
You didn't know what when you
Fell down in it
Walk on top, you run beneath
The blacktop spreads
The blacktop spreads
07 Distracted (03:14)
Consolation don't account for it
Healing helpless want to look
Like this
Bet distraction whips it out of you
Pay to see it suck you down
There too
Don't walk
One fuck now boost my self-esteem
One weak not a word sounds comforting
Beg forgiveness started back again
One for me said dig it deep
And then...
You walk
08 Make Room (03:30)
Embrace the motivation goes
Passed off as unintentional
One look showed you had to think
Eat this and say it doesn't reek
Right
Make room you come with open arms
Talk fast before the greeting starts
Incensed you know you need t know
Whose scene you made you didn't though
Sad
Taste of the month
Voice for the cause
Make room you come
With open arms
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