Helmet
Unsung

THE REVIEW

I should still have it somewhere, the t-shirt that exactly replicates the image of Unsung.

Purchased on a scorching evening in July 1993 when I saw the band in the furnace-like environment, due to tropical temperatures, at Bloom in Mezzago.

Twenty-five years have passed and it feels like yesterday.

Hamilton, Mengede, Bogdan, and Stanier tore down the venue walls; a deadly quartet of overflowing and sulfurous armed power.

I engaged in continuous stage diving like few other times. A massacre, a sonic slaughter that left deep wounds and aches in my youthful body.

They also performed Unsung; if my fickle memory serves me right, it was towards the end of the concert.

I was waiting for that track; I was ready to give it my all, to lose myself in a wild mosh pit.

It's Henry's obsessive bass that kicks off the following four minutes; Page and Peter's guitars join in and the disaster begins, in the true sense of the word.

Page's voice is corrosive sulfuric acid; much dirtier and more dramatic compared to the single.

John's completely detached drumming suddenly changes course and begins the final part of the track.

Like a steel blast furnace in free flow. Hardcore-Noise interweavings in unlimited sequence. They flatten everything, make "Tabula Rasa." Victims in a chain below the stage. Sweaty bodies clashing; disorienting auditory blows. They knocked me out.

They had no parallels in those furious years.

I must have listened to it thousands of times; as well as the entire album Meantime. Their absurd masterpiece for me. Even better than Strap It On (albeit by a very little).

The hands of Steve Albini and Andy Wallace in the production are unmistakably evident.

Written in ten minutes to reaffirm one thing: Helmet are not Metal. Just utterly Hardcore...IRONHEAD...

Diabolos Rising 666.