Showing posts with label Helmet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Helmet. Show all posts

Helmet's 'Betty' is still a bombshell

A conversation with Page Hamilton about band's classic third LP
By Peter Lindblad

The Helmet lineup in 2015 that's
playing 'Betty' in its entirety.
The record-buying public doesn't always take kindly to so-called "experimental" records. Helmet's Betty has taken its fair share of pot shots from detractors.

Relaxing in a black RV parked outside of the High Noon Saloon in Madison, Wis., back in March, Page Hamilton, one of the true architects of alternative-metal, is fighting a cough just hours before gig No. 61 of Helmet's recent tour, one in which the landmark Betty album was to be played in its entirety, with a second set chock full of favorites from other Helmet albums thrown in for good measure.

Helmet - Betty
The show will go on, road fatigue or no road fatigue, because Betty deserves it. And with miles to go before he sleeps – Helmet had 20 more shows to go on this victory lap for perhaps the most confounding record in the band's catalog – Hamilton couldn't be happier with the reception the tour's received.

"Amazing, yeah it's been great," said Hamilton, joined in Helmet nowadays by Dan Beeman, Kyle Stephenson and Dave Case. "We're sold out tonight, sold out tomorrow in Chicago, sold out in Cleveland. Last night in Minneapolis was 550, so that was a packed house. It's been good, really good. I love seeing packed houses, and the band is playing really well, so that's all you can hope for."

In 1994, anticipation for the follow-up to the monstrous sonic earthquake that was Meantime, Helmet's 1992 major label debut on Interscope Records, was feverish. An almost militaristic march of heavy, disciplined riffs and infectious grooves as high and tight as a Marine's crew cut, the groundbreaking post-metal masterpiece Meantime breathed fresh air into a scene that had long grown weary of the excesses of '80s glam and was mighty suspicious of grunge. What would Helmet do for an encore?

Along came Betty, an ambitious bombshell of thick, pummeling aural punishment that sent shrapnel flying in every direction, some of it landing in the disparate camps of jazz and blues. Although it wasn't the commercial smash everyone was hoping for, critics generally took a liking to it and over time, it's come to be appreciated as one of Helmet's finest.

Still, even as tracks like "Biscuits for Smut," "Milquetoast" (see the video below) and "I Know" retained the crunch of Meantime, more offbeat fare such as "The Silver Hawaiian," the jazz standard "Beautiful Love" and the demented lap-steel weirdness of "Sam Hell" led to lots of head scratching.



However, if this tour is any indication, Betty, Helmet's third record, has aged well. 

"Both albums seem to have survived the test of time, 20 years for Betty and 23 years for Meantime," said Hamilton. "And we play songs from both those albums, as well as Aftertaste. In London, after we did Betty, we did the second half of Meantime and the first half of Aftertaste for the second set and they went more crazy than they did for Betty, which pissed me off, because I thought, 'There goes my Aftertaste idea (laughs).' It's good to see that sometimes when you get flak when an album comes out because it's not like the previous album, that 20 years later you can see you did things right. That's what it's all about, because we're not trying to win any pop music competitions. We're not a mainstream band and never have been. Helmet fans are very loyal, and they know we're not going to come out with a disco record, or techno or whatever's the flavor of the month. We'll never sound like Katy Perry or Maroon 5."

Upon Betty's release, though, some were wondering if Helmet had lost its edge.

"I remember that day we did Flipside magazine, which was a cool magazine back in the late '80s, early '90s," related Hamilton. "It was Helmet mania, and they just loved Helmet. When Meantime came out, he came out to see a show in Long Beach, Kirk (or KRK Dominquez) from Flipside said, 'I wanted Helmet and I got a bonnet.' He thought we'd gotten soft after Strap It On and didn't like it at all."

Taking the sardonic criticism in stride, Hamilton vowed not to let it influence his artistic vision.

"I learned then that it doesn't matter what you do – somebody's a fan of what you do today, tomorrow they may be disappointed because you're not doing what you did yesterday," explained Hamilton. "So you have to stick to your guns and have a thick skin. You have to do make music for yourself and make music you know is good, and not try to please anybody else. I'm not worried about what critics say, or even fans. It could be disheartening at the time, but I have to know it's good. I have to study my craft and continue to move forward without throwing the baby out with the bath water."

Hamilton has a good sense of what Helmet's identity is, and although they may take the occasionally unexpected detour, he makes sure they never lose sight of who they are as a band.

"We're not Marilyn Manson," said Hamilton. "I'm not going to grow tits and change outfits. That's not what Helmet's thing is about. It's four guys in street clothes standing up there and trying to make music. It's strictly drop the needle. That's what it's about. That's what my heroes were for me – John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. They had cool suits in the '40s and '50s and '60s, whatever, but they just played music. It was just about the music, and that's what turned me on, that's what got me excited. Sure, I thought Jimmy Page looked cool in his dragon pants, in his penny loafers and whatever, and Robert Plant in ladies' blouses, but it was all about dropping the needle and listening to them singing and playing – that's what it's always been for Helmet. Some people hate that. They don't like me because I don't do that. They don't like us because we don't do that, and that's their prerogative. They can't say that we're not honest or we aren't good. They're saying they don't like us."

Helmet dropped the needle and then some when Hamilton, drummer John Stanier, bassist Henry Bogdan and guitarist Rob Echeverria – the replacement for Peter Mengede – entered the studio in the fall of 1993 to begin work on Betty, with writing and recording sessions at Soundtrack, Power Station and Sound on Sound in New York City.

Helmet - Meantime
While touring in support of Meantime, there were reports of internal tensions, and Mengede allegedly did not leave on the best of terms in early 1993. Still, Hamilton doesn't recall the sessions for Betty as being overly stressful, although there was pressure from outside influences.

"Yeah, it was a little bit, I suppose, but every album there's some stress involved," said Hamilton. "Strap It On, it was my bartending tips that paid for it, so we're like, 'Okay, that mix sounds good,' and I had to stand there with my hand on two faders, and Bogdan on one; they had two faders, so we're mixing manually on the board, and it was like, 'Okay, I think we're set up now. Push that up a little bit. Now go back.' So that's stressful. With Meantime, we'd signed a big record deal, and we had people from the record company coming in and listening, so we're like, this is weird, you know? And with Betty, after a gold record and a Grammy nomination for Meantime, everybody wanted to make it Nirvana. We're like, 'We're not anything like Nirvana,' nothing like Nirvana. And Aftertaste … well, 'Betty didn't do as well as Meantime, so Aftertaste has to be like this and that,' and I was like, 'All I can do is write the songs and record them and sing them to the best of my ability.' And that's what it is. It should be fun. The process has always been fun and enjoyable for me, and it's simply about music."

When it came to Betty, Hamilton and company had aspirations of expanding Helmet's sound to incorporate other genres, as other voices within the band begged to be heard.

"Yeah, that was what was fun about it," said Hamilton. "We wrote some songs … I guess it started with, 'Well, man, what more can we do?' Strap It On morphed into Meantime, which morphed into Betty and there were other elements. Henry had an interest in lap steel guitar, and other things he was writing. He was listening to the Beatles I think when he came up with the riffs for 'Silver Hawaiian.' And I wanted the whole band to feel more included, because I think they saw that when there was a clear leader in the band after a couple of years, there's a leader and I think that makes guys uncomfortable. I just wanted make sure that everybody knew it was a band, that I'm the singer, the writer and essentially the producer, but without a great band, you're shit. I'm not Trent Reznor, where I've got the genius technological ability … that guy's amazing in the studio. I don't know if he can play guitar as well as I can, but he's a genius in the studio, so he doesn't necessarily need a band to make a record. I do."

Like all Helmet records, Betty grooves ... relentlessly. Hamilton feels that comes naturally for Helmet, that it's not something they ever have to think about.

"I think every record grooves. We never consciously said we've got to groove or we've got to be groovier or whatever," said Hamilton. "John Stanier was listening to a lot of hip-hop and a lot of drum and bass. Henry was listening to country and western and Hawaiian music, and I was listening to my usual jazz, which is all about groove and feel and swing, as well as classical things, expanding my understanding of harmonic knowledge. But we never consciously said, 'God, We're so funky.' AC/DC is a different kind of funky from Rage Against The Machine or Red Hot Chili Peppers. To me, those bands are more trying to incorporate that thing in their sound, and I like AC/DC, that sound. That's my band. I thought the Beatles grooved. The Stones, in their sloppy way, kind of grooved, so it's not like we're trying to play white-boy funk or anything."

While the notion of whether a record grooves or not may be a nebulous concept, song composition is not, and while more well-known tracks off Betty might garner more attention, Hamilton is sweet on another.

"Somebody asked me that last night after the show," said Hamilton, responding to a question about which song on Betty is his favorite. "It's hard for me to say, but I'd probably have to say 'Overrated.' I've always liked the structure. I just found this cool chord progression of things that I thought of at the time. There was a cool tension release in the song; it's an interesting structure. It's not really supposed work at all."

Hamilton admits, "I've always experimented with structures, that's kind of what I'm known for." On "Wilma's Rainbow," Hamilton used another Helmet classic as the foundation for what that track would become.

"I like that song," said Hamilton. "That's the structure that I came up with for 'Unsung.' That's a different structure, too. It's got a verse and chorus, but it's also got a developing section in the outro, and a song like 'Pure' from Aftertaste,  it's got a different structure."

Construction of Betty was completed by Helmet, along with Andy Wallace on mixing, Howie Weinberg on mastering and Martin Bisi, known also for his work with Sonic Youth, Swans and White Zombie, handling the engineering. Bisi was a late arrival, coming in midway through the proceedings to record Echeverria's guitar parts and additional overdubs.

Finally, on June 21, 1994, Betty had its coming-out party, settling in at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart, Helmet's best chart performance ever. Alas, it was not the commercial success Meantime was, and in the aftermath, Echeverria departed to join Biohazard, leaving Helmet a trio. 1997 brought Aftertaste, and later, a new guitarist in Chris Traynor, formerly of Orange 9mm. That record spent very little time on the charts, and sales were disappointing. The 1997-98 "Aftertaste" tour was the band's swan song – that is, until Hamilton revived Helmet in 2004.

If he has any regrets about any of it, Hamilton isn't sharing them.

"There's so many events that happened over the life of the band," said Hamilton. "It was roughly 10 years, and now I've got eight-plus years with Kyle, so he and I are the core of the band at this point, but we've got two guys who are amazing players, Danny and Dave. So it feels like a real band to me, as much as the original lineup did for the first five years. Unfortunately, people grow … not unfortunately, but people grow apart, and it happens and you can't control what other people want to do. They decided it was their time to move on, and I said to them early on when we were about to sign a record deal, to Peter, John and Henry, 'I'm not putting your kids through college just because we were in a band together. I don't owe you anything, and you don't owe me anything.' They were clear that it was my band, it's just sometimes shit happens."

Check out this Helmet performance on KXEP to get a taste of what they're like live nowadays.


Dead of winter: New music to warm your cold bones

What upcoming releases are we dying to hear?
By Peter Lindblad

Venom will release 'From the Very
Depths' on Jan. 27, 2015
January can be a cold, barren time in the music business, such as it is.

After the frantic run up to Christmas, with a fall full of notable releases from high-profile artists singing for their holiday suppers, the whole industry often seems to go dark at once – at least temporarily.

The silence doesn't last long, however. Soon, the factories that feed the music-consumer beast will begin humming again, and in no time, a steady stream of news regarding upcoming albums, EPs, DVDs and tours will flood an already well-saturated market.

Even now, though, in this very bleak mid-winter, there's a trickle of news coming out regarding some hotly anticipated releases and other events for 2015. Just this week came word from the Nuclear Blast label that metal heavyweights Slayer, Testament and Meshuggah will all be issuing new material in 2015, as well as new tour dates for Helmet's 20th anniversary celebration of their landmark LP Betty. At the end of "Wilma's Rainbow" is a pot of gold, and this is it.

Here are some more upcoming releases we're salivating over:

Venom - From the Very Depths 2015
Venom – From the Very Depths: Satanic imagery and punk-fired black metal will bring the thaw, as Venom returns with From the Very Depths on Jan. 27, coming via Spinefarm Records.

Front man Chronos has a message for his followers.

"This album is perfect," he said. "All three members are totally over-the-top confident with the new songs and the production. We had a great atmosphere in the studio while we were recording – Dante created pure thunder from his drums, while Rage tears the flesh off your face with his riffs, making everything fall into place so well ... it's a strong release and really shows the band maturing into an unstoppable force of pure Black Metal. We can't wait to play the songs live for the legions ... Hell yeah!"

Having just recently received an advance copy – expect a review very soon – my initial reaction is From the Very Depths sounds like classic Venom. It's fast, dark and rugged, an incendiary hell broth of seething guitars and explosive rhythms.

Revolution Saints - S/T 2015
Revolution Saints – Revolution Saints: Super groups seem to be a dime a dozen these days, what with your Rated Xs and your Kings of Chaos all doing their thing.

Here's another one, featuring guitarist Doug Aldrich – fresh off his leaving Whitesnake – and Night Ranger's Jack Blades, as well as Deen Castronovo, the drummer from Journey. A self-titled LP is due Feb. 24 from Frontiers Records.

There won't be any EDM found here or any of that bearded folk-rock melancholy that all the kids seem to love. Expect melodic hard-rock of the highest order from industry pros, with an emphasis on songs that are all heart and soul and top-notch musicianship. And, on top of that, Castronovo will be handling lead vocals. Didn't see that coming, did you?

U.D.O. - Decadent 2015
U.D.O. – Decadent: U.D.O. is preparing for class warfare, and Decadent drops a bomb of hard-charging traditional metal and blistering social commentary on the wealthy and the entitled.

Keeping up with his old band Accept isn't easy, considering what an unbelievable roll they're on with their last three records. Still, Udo Dirkschneider and those legendary teeth-gnashing vocals of his take a backseat to no one, and his most recent studio effort, the titanic Steamhammer, was simply unstoppable, a unsinkable battleship of a record that found glory in tumult. A live release that followed brought to bear all the power and majesty of this version of U.D.O.

The hope is Decadent, album No. 15 from U.D.O. and the second since the departure of longtime collaborator Stefan Kaufmann, will make Steamhammer seem like child's play, as Dirkschneider looks to eat the rich – metaphorically speaking, of course.

"Decadent behavior by privileged society exists in the whole world in completely different shades," says Udo. "Decadence is almost like a universal language. What bothers me the most is the egocentrism that goes along with that. People who have everything seem not to really care about the world around them anymore; it's like they use their own privileged status as an absolution for that. Also they do not seem to see that there's a correlation between their own luxury and the poverty of others."

Those are, indeed, fighting words. Decadent drops Feb. 3 via AFM Records.

Toto - Toto XIV
Toto – Toto XIV: On the softer side of things, there's Toto. Some may scoff, but we've missed their sterling musicianship, their ability to craft memorable pop-rock ear candy and their grandiose arrangements. And quite frankly, we all could stand some romance, some adventure and some positivity in our lives. I do sorely miss the rains down in Africa.

It's been almost 10 years since Toto's last opus, Falling in Between. A date's been set for the release of Toto XIV (they do love their roman numerals, don't they?), with the glorious event taking place March 24, courtesy of Frontiers Records Srl. It'll be coming out in all kinds of different formats, a two-LP vinyl set among them.

Guitarist Steve Lukather can barely contain his excitement. "When you put us in a room, and everybody brings in their pieces, the next thing you know it all fits together," says Lukather. "Everybody's performances are top-notch. We are really bringing our best out, forcing ourselves to make personal best choices, what's best for the music. I'm really excited to hear what people think."

Lord Dying - Poisoned Altars 2015
Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars: Time to restore some street cred. Poisoned Altars is the second outing from Lord Dying, one of the most fearsome and powerful new doom-metal outfits out there. Its churning riff magma will undoubtedly cause fiery, blackened, aural devastation and destruction on an apocalyptic level.

Will Lord Dying be able to avoid the sophomore jinx, after 2013's monstrous Summon The Faithless? That's a given, considering Toxic Holocaust's Joel Grind is handling the production end of things. Let's just go ahead and give Lord Dying a spot on the Best of 2015 list right now. Poisoned Altars comes out Jan. 27 on Relapse Records. Great cover by the way. Lord Dying, you've really outdone yourselves.


CD Review: Prong – Ruining Lives

CD Review: Prong – Ruining Lives
Steamhammer/SPV
All Access Rating: A-

Prong - Ruining Lives 2014
Tommy Victor threw away the rulebook when Prong was formed, his experiences as a sound man at the famed punk club CBGBs undoubtedly opening up his mind to what was possible musically.

Always a little different and usually way ahead of the curve, the daring New York City alternative-metal outsiders introduced old-school hardcore hostility to trash-metal, while occasionally trespassing the fenced-in junkyards of harsh industrial noise and electronic squalor to steal taboo sounds and allowing undercurrents of rumbling, Killing Joke-style post-punk brooding to seep into their violent urban sonic wasteland.

All of this, of course, being subservient to Victor's rampaging, brutally efficient guitar riffs, Prong's pounding rhythmic machinery and the toughest, most tenacious hooks around. Now comes Ruining Lives, a Steamhammer/SPV release that's a dark, streamlined whirlwind of activity, with Prong's relentless energy cloaked in unexpectedly rich and full tonality. As one surgical riff strike after another is detonated, the sleek and powerful Ruining Lives races forward, with Victor's clear, forceful vocals issuing a series of enigmatic calls to arms, breaking through the record's glossy sheen.

Harnessing all of Prong's far-flung influences and aggression in a controlled burn, Ruining Lives consists of songs of sturdy construction and ferocious pace, never sitting in one place long enough to grow bored. Less angry, but still provocative lyrically, Victor sets out to free the soul from whatever binds and oppresses it, exploring themes of metropolitan alienation and self-determinant living as the threesome slams headlong into the bruising opener "Turnover" and its hard-hitting successor "The Barriers." Later experimenting with a new time signature, Prong turns the innovative "Come to Realize" inside-out, injecting it with an "out of left field" riff that, if nothing else, proves the band is still capable of surprising people.

High-speed, high-impact material like "The Book of Change" thrive on pure audio adrenaline, but the title track is a heavy, more ponderous beast that grows more powerful by the second, as do the moody "Absence of Light" and "Remove, Separate Self," two songs with quickening tempos and gripping, galvanizing choruses. Still as disciplined as Helmet, but with Killing Joke's subversive melodic sensibilities bubbling up from the cold, hard ground, Prong hasn't ruined anything, including their chances for record of the year.
– Peter Lindblad


CD Review: Monte Pittman – The Power of Three

CD Review: Monte Pittman – The Power of Three
Metal Blade Records
All Access Rating: B+

Monte Pittman - The Power of Three 2014
Diehard fans of alternative-metal misanthropes Prong know who Monte Pittman is, and so does Madonna. If nothing else, Monte Pittman has connections, but that's only part of his story.

Leaving his Texas home behind, Pittman headed for Los Angeles to set up shop as a guitar teacher. Quite by chance, his third student was British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, then-husband of the Material Girl. In short order, Pittman became Madonna's instructor, which led to him joining her onstage at a "David Letterman Show" promotional performance tied to the release of her album Music and then becoming a full-fledged member of her touring lineup beginning with the 2001 Drowned World Tour, not to mention his guitar work on every one of her records since then.

That's all well and good, but it's not exactly metal. Teaching her to play Pantera riffs ... that's metal. There's actually video evidence of it on YouTube. When it comes to gaining street cred with the metal community, however, bringing six-string savagery to Prong on the hard-hitting Scorpio Rising and Power of the Damager, two of their most ferocious studio albums, as well as the band's blazing concert manifesto 100% Live, would more than do the trick. And they say politics makes strange bedfellows.

As a solo artist, Pittman has gravitated from the full-bodied acoustic meditations found on 2009's The Deepest Dark to the brooding grunge of 2011's Pain, Love & Destiny. His latest album, The Power of Three, finds Pittman and co-conspirators Kane Ritchotte (drums) and Max Whipple (bass) raging through 10 tracks of aggressive, boot-stomping thrash-metal and straightforward metallic groove-mongering suffused with strong melodic currents. "Blood Hungry Thirst" is all of that and then some, while the hard-charging "A Dark Horse," with its shadowy, sinister acoustic intro knitted together by Pittman's fingers, "Missing" and "Delusions of Grandeur" tear the roof off The Power of Three with furious riffs and heart-pounding speed, leaving just enough room for Pittman to reel off spectacularly frenzied solos.

Enlisting recording guru Flemming Rasmussen, who was at least partly responsible for the white-hot intensity and epic swells of Metallica's Master of Puppets, Pittman left no doubt about his intentions. The Power of Three was going to be a lethal killing machine, with burly production that didn't simply cater to a guitar hero's whims and able to stick to the militaristic tautness of Helmet. There's plenty of Pittman's dynamic shredding to go around, but the drums – Ritchotte's cymbals crashing and rippling in little blurs – and bass are just as assertive, with Pittman's reedy vocals sounding disembodied, almost like a younger Ozzy or Fu Manchu's Scott Hill.

And when Pittman chooses, he displays an affinity for generous hooks and wide-sky choruses, such as the ones in "Everything's Undone," the best song the Foo Fighters never wrote, and the even more expansive, billowing "End of the World." Rich in melody, these are the exceptions, as Pittman and company would rather sink their teeth into gnarled, mauling riffs, like those found on "Away From Here" and "Before the Mourning Son." That's where the power of this threesome really lies, the only problem being that it's pretty standard-issue stuff. There's nothing truly original here, just some intriguing variations in tempo, a thick, heavy sound, riffs to die for and a tightness that other bands would do well to emulate. http://www.metalblade.com/us/
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Prong - Carved into Stone

CD Review: Prong - Carved into Stone
Long Branch Records
All Access Review: A-
Prong - Carved into Stone 2012
Mavericks in a thrash-metal scene that placed more of a premium on playing with wild abandon and blistering speed than rigid precision, Prong and its brutally intense major-label classic Cleansing, from 1994, was only slightly looser and a tad less militaristic than Helmet’s rugged Meantime. Pummeling industrial minimalism that seemed to march to the orders of an unseen drill sergeant set Prong apart from the herd it had taken a cattle prod to in hard-hitting pieces like “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” and “Whose Fist Is This Anyway?” In the years since, Prong, on occasion, has grown even more taut and single-minded, sometimes mistakenly neglecting the barely harnessed power of its formidable low end. Released from Al Jourgensen’s 13th Planet label – Prong mastermind Tommy Victor also played with Ministry in the early 2000s – and winding up on SPV’s new Long Branch Records imprint, the crossover terrorists have significantly fattened a wiry sonic frame that had grown too lean.
In doing so, they have created a monster, the seething sonic psychopath Carved into Stone. Still painting bleak, disturbing visions of urban decay and street-level violence with technically brilliant musicianship, the harsh realities of Prong’s more recent diatribes are delivered with raging guitars, barking vocals and the double-kick drum blunt-force trauma of Alexei Rodriguez. Roaring out of the gate, the speed-metal blitz of opener “Eternal Heat” leaves one breathless, just as the visceral acts of sonic aggression that follow – namely, “Keep on Living in Pain” and “Ammunition” – somehow maintain the impossible breakneck pace previously set. Thicker and heavier, “Path of Least Resistance” and the surging title track, with its punching-bag rhythms and the kind of widescreen, black-hole choruses the Deftones get lost in, are mazes of dynamic riffage, while “Revenge … Best Served Cold” and “State of Rebellion” subversively chisel biting melodies into their uncompromising marriage of industrial and metal sadomasochism. An awesome sculpture of sound and fury, Carved into Stone is guilty of an aural assault so devastating that it really ought to be locked up.


-            Peter Lindblad