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Helmet’s Interscope debut was punishing and intense, but also catchy enough to become a commercial success.

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Was Helmet set to become the new Nirvana ? It certainly looked that way on the surface – their 1992 Interscope debut, Meantime , arrived less than a year after Nirvana’s Nevermind , and its lead single, the jerky, syncopated alt-metal chugger “Unsung,” on the surface bore a striking resemblance to grunge.

Listen to Helmet’s Meantime on Apple Music and Spotify .

But Helmet’s sound was in place well before the grunge explosion. In fact, the band set the record straight in a 1992 interview with Spin , in which guitarist/vocalist Page Hamilton clarified that interest in the New York post-hardcore band began well before “ Smells Like Teen Spirit ” crashed onto mainstream radio playlists. And that interest was a little intense. “I actually had an A&R guy at one label tell us that we were the next U2 ,” Hamilton said. “At a certain point, it just becomes ludicrous.”

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Listening back to Helmet’s first album, Strap It On , it’s easy to understand the excitement, though the commercial potential takes a bit more imagination. Released on the Amphetamine Reptile label, which heavily comprised noise rock bands, Strap It On pairs hooks with feedback and shrieks, as much a product of Hamilton’s background in avant-garde performance as it was a rowdy product of the evolution of New York hardcore.

Meantime was different; still punishingly heavy and intense, it found the band embracing melody and catchier choruses. Bearing an inscrutable album cover that at first looks like an explosion, but reveals itself with closer inspection – as if it were a Magic Eye poster – to be a man in a helmet and jacket with some kind of long-handled tool, Meantime makes an immediate impression. The leadoff track, “In the Meantime,” arrives via excessive force, its full-blast volume intro a cacophonous gateway to the song’s drop-D low-end groove.

The band is efficient with their approach throughout, primarily sticking to power chord riffs and guitar distortion without an excess of effects, but they take that fairly straightforward foundation and build it up into something more than the sum of its parts. “Give It” backs the band’s chunk guitar riffs with a laid-back swing, while their hit single “Unsung” is the band’s best Sabbath tribute, its doomy guitars nodding to Tony Iommi while Hamilton’s own vocals have more than a tinge of Ozzy in their timbre. But it’s not always about the guitars: “You Borrowed” is a climactic, firing-on-all-cylinders side two standout, collapsing in a furious sequence of fills from drummer John Stanier.

Helmet self-produced Meantime , with all but one track engineered by Wharton Tiers. Steve Albini, famed for his work with indie legends The Pixies, Superchunk, and The Jesus Lizard, engineered “In the Meantime,” which was later remixed by Andy Wallace. However, this caused a bit of controversy in its aftermath, as Albini was dissatisfied with Wallace’s mixing, which was more polished and employed use of triggered samples. After the fact, when Albini agreed to record Nirvana’s In Utero in 1993, he asked for a clause to be added to his contract, stipulating that Wallace – who had also mixed Nevermind – would not be allowed to remix the album.

Though expectations ran unusually high, Meantime became a turning point for Helmet. They didn’t turn out to be either the next Nirvana or U2, but more importantly, Meantime established them as a formidable sonic force. A sonic force, it should be noted, that proved commercially successful – Meantime was certified gold in 1992, and sold more than two million copies worldwide.

Terry Heilman

February 25, 2022 at 4:26 pm

Andy Wallace fucked up more records with his shitty mixing. He’s a hack par excellence.

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Helmet are an American heavy metal band hailing from New York City, New York, USA who formed in 1989. Lead singer, songwriter and lead guitarist Page Hamilton founded the band and has been its sole founding member since 2006.

In their two and a half decades spent rocking like nobody’s business, Helmet have cultivated a reputation as “the thinking man’s metal band”. A band that dials down the silliness and excess often associated with riffs the size of planets and plays it a lot straighter than most bands do.

This is nothing if not a risky move; ironically enough leaving them open to more derision than most metal bands are. So it’s just as well that Helmet are an absolutely sensational band that more than lives up to the “Thinking man’s metal band” tag and then some.

Hamilton formed the band in 1989 after leaving his previous group Band of Susans. They were an immediate success, with Halo Of Flies frontman Tom Hazelmyer spotting them perform live the same year and signing them to his record label Amphetamine Reptile Records very soon after. 1990 saw the release of their debut album, the critically acclaimed and highly influential “Strap It On”.

Such a band could only have been a success in the early 90’s. It was a time when a band as profoundly straight-laced, intense and straight up heavy as Helmet could command a million dollar record deal with Interscope Records while still retaining almost total creative control over their records. An even better sign of the times though? It paid off.

The first album the band made on the label, 1992’s “Meantime”, was certified Gold in the States and sold over 2 million copies worldwide. However, come the mid 90’s and friction between the band members was starting to become a legitimate problem and after two albums that failed to live up to the commercial success of“Meantime”, the band split in 1997.

However, the Helmet story was far from over. The band came back together around Hamilton and bassist Chris Traynor when Hamilton was convinced by Interscope to take a solo album of his and release it under the more commercially viable Helmet moniker. Since then they’ve released a further two albums and counting, and led by Hamilton, they continue to be one of heavy metal’s modern masters to this day. Highly recommended.

Live reviews

Page Hamilton’s band, Helmet, has had a strong influence on the metal genre and the band’s concerts convey why they are such a highly respected band.

Although Helmet hasn’t quite retained the commercial success that they garnered from the Steve Albini produced album, Meantime, they are still powering on and creating great albums that their loyal fan base respects. Helmet had the rage and intensity behind their music that was comparable to Nirvana, but their delivery was very structured and formalized, which would be expected from a band like Wire or Big Black.

Page Hamilton plays with his guitar with lots of gain and cranked up to the highest level. He plays in a rhythmic and machine like pattern, intensely playing down strokes in perfect tempo. Hamilton’s education as a jazz guitarist also is shown in his music. He is frequently seen playing complex chords and avant-garde styles that were inspired by his jazz training. Hamilton was also notable for incorporating the drop D tuning into his music that created a heavier sound. Hamilton’s voice is also very dynamic and he is able to quickly jump between different vocal ranges. The drummer of Helmet plays as if he is pounding steel in the most intense way possible, giving the music an industrial sound.

There is no doubt that Helmet’s concerts are wild and rowdy. Page Hamilton can be seen jumping around the stage and head banging to the music. The crowd is just as wild as the band, starting up mosh pits and crowd surfing all over the venue. Helmet’s setlist contains songs spanning through most of their albums and they are sure to play hit songs such as “Unsung”. Helmet is currently working on new material for their upcoming album and are still touring pretty regularly. There is a reason why that so many bands like Nine Inch Nails, System of a Down, and Tool cite Helmet as a major influence and to see them live clearly conveys their excellence in performance and songwriting.

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Local H - ****

So the concept of a two man band isn't new at all. Before Royal Blood, White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Kills and even Black Box Revelation, there was and still is Local H. And they bring an interesting sound. A bit strange, they exist longer than all of the above, but kept under the radar. I recommend you listen to the album As Good As Dead from 1996. Nice to meet you, Local H. I hope to hear from you again soon.

Helmet - ****

Ik ben niet zo lyrisch als een muziekjournalist, ik moet het niet hebben van bombastische volzinnen volgepropt met logge constructies en de obligate woordspelingen, maar het verbaast me ergens wel dat de zelfverklaarde profeten van de muziek nergens te bespeuren waren in De Kreun. Go figure. Ik kan het optreden even strak samenvatten als de gitaarrifs van Page Hamilton. Strak dus. Dit was een retegoed optreden. De eerste drie nummers speelden ze gebundeld, en daarna kreeg het aanwezige publiek de kans om Hamilton en co een eerste maal te bedanken. Ik ken de albums niet vanbuiten, en mijn laatste Helmet aankoop dateert ook alweer van 1997 met Aftertaste, maar ik herkende duidelijk het verschil tussen het oude en nieuwe werk. Het optreden was een kennismaking met hun nieuwe album van 2016, gekoppeld aan het beste van Betty (1994) en afgerond met enkele nummers die nooit aan een setlist mogen ontbreken zoals Unsung. Veni, vidi, en wat is het Latijn voor: ik heb genoten?

Two years ago I saw Helmet perform Meantime in its entirety at Manchester Sound Control and they also played two tracks off Betty.

Skip to 2014 and Helmet announce Betty 20th anniversary tour at the same venue. I was a fan of Betty back in the day so I was pretty excited about seeing one of my fave albums played live especially at such a good venue.

Page is now 54 and the rest of his band are youths but throw themselves into the music like the young pups that they are.

The music live is heavy and the riffs are monolithic with the aural capacity to bludgeon. I saw this gig sober and it was relentlessly loud.

The guitarwork is awesome yet strangely atonal and experimental. Billed as the thinking man's metal band they are the perfect antidote for the image conscious nu-metal bands clooging up the airwaves in the late nineties.

A monumental gig of leviathian proportions.

Page!!! The show was awesome! 30 years, 30 shows, 30 song sets. Hell yeah! What a great time at the Paradise in Boston. The first few songs everyone kinda chilled, sipped their drinks and watched. After that, the pit just opened up, got bigger and bigger as the show progressed and by the time it was at the Midway point the whole floor was moving. Please realize that this was an older crowd and it being Boston, I was so happy to see so many Sam Black Church hoodies and t-shirts. It's only fitting because Helmet and SBC gained popularity and their core fanbase during the same period,the early 90s. Helmet was instrumental in pioneering a sound that blended groove metal with grunge and punk rock. How was the show? Amazing! Page Hamilton was so cool, speaking to all the fans afterwards.

Salve,come mi aspettavo il concerto è stato semplicemente fantastico.gli Helmet nonostante l' età hanno dimostrato una professionalità e una tecnica superiore a tutti.hanno suonato un infinità di canzoni estrapolate da tutti gli album.Sono stati momenti bellissimi.Complimenti a Page&co. per la precisione di ogni singola nota e ogni singolo stacco.Non c'è stata nemmeno una stonatura.Un aneddoto simpatico:ci siamo trovati per caso nello stesso locale per cena e a fine cena prima di andare via sono stati gentilissimi nel fare foto e qualche shot tutti insieme.

Spero che tornino almeno per trascorrere le vacanze e fare un improvvisata da qualche parte.....

Hear you later Helmet.Ironhead.

Amazing show!! Page still sounds as bad ass as ever. His other band members especially the rhythm guitarist Dan were very cool they took time to take pictures shake hands and sign records. Page sat down on the end of the stage talking to everyone and taking selfies with every fan that wanted one. I got a pic with him too, unfortunately he wasn't looking at the camera he had his arm around me, but really down to earth guys. Crescent Ballroom is a great venue, the sound is amazing, Page said he will be playing there every time he comes back. I can't wait to go to another show there. So up lose and personal. I give it 4 RockStars

Stellar performance by Page Hamilton.

Finally a band with Balls comes to town.....

A once on a life time chance to see the album Betty played in it's entirety and favorites like unsung and ser you dead was the ultimate during the second set...

Page is a guitar virtuoso that leaves a lasting impression

I love this band! They are always on point and play w/ mathematical precision. They take the stage w/ no fanfare and play nonstop for 2 hour sets! This show in particular they played every song I could have asked for. After the show the band couldn't be more gracious and accessible to their fans.

Fantastic show and they killed it with almost 2 hrs of music. Played the whole record Betty, then went on to play tons of other hits. Encore was Just Another Victim and In The Meantime.

It was fun getting in a mosh pit again even though I'm 38. Felt like 1994 all over again!

What an awesome show. 30 songs, phenomenal show so very grateful to get to experience seeing them live cant Express the importance of that for myself. Saw them play a long while back in Long Branch NJ and was hooked from then. Got an autograph! Thanks Helmet keep the music going!

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Strength To Minimize: Helmet’s Meantime at 30

When Interscope Records cashed their chips on a most unconventional heavy metal band

Meantime was never ever going to be the next Nevermind.

I’m sure if you told a twenty-something fan today that Helmet’s sophomore masterpiece was expected by some to commercially compete with Nirvana’s breakthrough, they’d be confused. Rightfully. 

But the rather surprising success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” somehow caused record labels and their A&R departments lose their damn minds, back in ‘91-92. It felt like there was a race to sign bands with any traction at all in the indie world. On the strength of their very abrasive (but solid) Amphetamine Reptile Records debut, 1990’s Strap It On, the new, cool major label Interscope Records signed Helmet, giving them a million-dollar advance. 

Interscope, distributed through Atlantic Records, was also the home of edgy San Francisco trio Primus, and they soon signed Nine Inch Nails, Rocket From The Crypt and the Reverend Horton Heat. For a minute, it was a major label that specialized in music based in the underground. Of course, there was the expectation that this new strain of music – generally lumped under the category of “alternative rock” – would make money. Fair enough, record labels don’t put out albums to be charitable. But in the post-Nevermind world, the expectations were probably increased considerably.  

And, for a time at least, the A&R depart-ments seemed successful at igoring their radio promo departments – and the accountants. Record labels were seemingly in competition to sign the hippest, most underground bands. This was in contrast to radio, of course: they were, as ever, concerned curating playlists of songs that would keep listeners listening through commercial breaks. It’s easy to imagine commercial radio gatekeepers asking the Interscope label reps “What else do you have?” Eventually, the answer would be the very Nirvana-esque Bush. They needed music that would blend in well, before and after Nirvana; what they didn’t need was a string of equally original and abrasive bands. 

But let’s forget about the context of the era. Meantime is a awesomely brutal album. It may not have sold tons of CDs and tapes, but it made a huge impact. Helmet was a band of dudes who were obviously influenced by metal, but didn’t fit in with that scene, and didn’t try to. The guitars were doomy like Tony Iommi’s, albeit much faster. Page Hamilton’s vocals were reminiscent of Ozzy Osbourne’s, and added a haunting sense of melody to their songs, as Ozzy’s did with Sabbath. And John Stanier’s relentless drums were the secret weapon: Every beat felt like a punch to the face. They were mixed almost like the drums in a hip-hop song. 

Of course, Sabbath wasn’t Helmet’s only influence; These guys really sounded like they came from the underground hardcore punk scene, and they looked and felt more like Fugazi or Sick of It All than they did like the Birmingham metal legends, or anyone else in the metal scene. Their songs were earthbound and so was their look: they all sported short hair and just dressed like regular dudes.  Even the flannel of the Seattle bands of the time seemed too loud and flamboyant for Helmet. Their music had the economy of hardcore too: this wasn’t a band showing off their chops with guitar and drum solos. 

And they didn’t need any superfluous elements. Despite the fact that they were waaaaay too abrasive for radio, their songs were really catchy. It wasn’t just raw aggression, there’s not a bit of fat on Meantime’s 10 tracks. And it sounded grea: they clearly used their big advance to make an awesome sounding album that did justice to classics like “In The Meantime,” “Give It,” “You Borrowed” and their near-hit, “Unsung.” 

VIDEO: Helmet “Unsung”

Meantime would be a major influence on Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven – interestingly, the biggest metal purists of the ‘90s were influenced by a band who were anything but purists. Of course, most of the nu-metal bands that followed cite Helmet as a major influence, for better or worse. In the early ‘90s, even with all the hype, Helmet was mainly playing clubs and small theaters. And, funny enough, they just announced a tour with like-minded ‘90s no-nonsense metal/hardcore hybrids Clutch and Quicksand, that will take them across America’s clubs and small theaters.

But while Helmet and their tourmates might wish they were playing in slightly bigger venues, none of them ever seemed to chase the money, and there must be a satisfaction in knowing that their fans are true fans, and not showing up to hear radio hits.

All three bands have the respect of the fans, and showing up to shows with a Helmet shirt is still a badge of honor, a secret handshake of sorts with other fans who dove deeper than radio playlists in the ‘90s. 

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David Seville

David Seville is a music enthusiast and journalist who has done time at MTV, VH1, SiriusXM and Loudwire, among other places.

2 thoughts on “ Strength To Minimize: Helmet’s Meantime at 30 ”

Love love love Helmet. I met Page a few years ago when they were touring with Prong, another early 90s favorite. Great guy, appreciative of all the fans.

I discovered Helmet and Quicksand when I was in grade 10 and they continue to be two of my favourite bands today. I was able to finally see Quicksand live in 2019, and I am hoping to see Helmet live someday. It’s tough when you live in Saskatchewan, Canada!

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Helmet's Meantime at 30: The alt.rock masterpiece still shaping modern metal

Released on June 23, 1992, Helmet's Meantime has hit its 30th anniversary. Here's why it remains essential listening

The story of Helmet in the early '90s isn’t one that can be effectively told through the usual checklist of music industry awards and accolades. There aren’t any easy-reference stats or figures that speak to their true status or impact. Instead, for a sense of where they were at, and what the world thought back then, it’s instructive to turn towards the era’s indubitable bastions of good taste and distinction, Beavis and Butthead. In a 1993 episode of their hit MTV show entitled Beware Of The Butt , Helmet's video for Unsung , the sole single from the New Yorker’s second album Meantime, was aired. Following some entirely predictable sniggers at the quartet's chosen band name, our  adolescent anti-heroes briefly fell silent in appreciation.

“If you, like, saw these guys in the street,” Butthead sagely noted, “you wouldn’t even know that they’re cool.”

“They look like normal guys… Like us!” Beavis giggled, the duo duly proceeding to air guitar and headbang as the song frantically raced to a finish.

Ignoring the fact that this insight and wisdom was preceded by a scene in which the pair had exposed their asses at the local drive-thru, alongside a rearranged marquee message reading, ‘Hello, look at our butts’, such a resounding endorsement was, um, not to be sniffed at. In the 1990s, if Beavis and Butthead said you sucked, you probably sucked. But if they decided you were cool, it was kind of a big deal. For Helmet, this endorsement represented a new level of mainstream arrival, and approval. Scoring a double hit of horns-up appreciation on a TV show being beamed into the homes of untold millions of impressionable teens around the world left a cultural imprint, however archaic such influence might sound to anyone too young to have experienced life pre-internet. 

The segment was a watershed moment for the quartet, another somewhat surreal milestone in a whirlwind couple of years, which saw them emerge, in the post-Nirvana goldrush, as one of the principal acts courted and coveted by major labels desperate to unearth the next big thing. Strange as it may seem in hindsight, Helmet were considered serious contenders. There were legitimate reasons for this optimism too. The four piece - vocalist guitarist Hamilton, Australian guitarist Peter Mengede, bassist Henry Bogdan and drummer John Stanier - had notched-up impressive sales of 40,000 for their 1990 debut studio album, Strap It On . For context, that level of return ensured that the band’s parent label, Minneapolis-based indie Amphetamine Reptile, could continue to do business throughout the decade, releasing glorious noise-rock records from Melvin s, Today Is The Day, Chokebore, Cows, Cosmic Psychos and more. With the buzz of that breakthrough came the inevitable A&R clamour. At its height, it’s rumoured that there were as many as 22 labels involved in the bidding war for the band’s signature. In the end, Interscope Records would be the victors, thanks to a reported one million dollar signing fee and by virtue of their overtures pre-dating the bandwagon-hopping opportunists.

“They were interested in us before Nirvana even broke,” frontman Page Hamilton told Spin magazine in September 1992. “And that's good because we're obviously not it [the next big thing]. I actually had an A&R guy at one label tell us that we were the next U2. At a certain point it just becomes ludicrous.”

Helmet being hyped as the next anything, let alone big, underlined a fundamental misunderstanding of what made them such an intriguing prospect in the first place. 

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When they emerged at the tail end of the ‘80s, long hair, denim and leather was still the unofficial uniform of hard rock and metal true believers. Grunge would go some way towards breaking down those image-centric norms, but inevitably, the so-called Seattle scene’s own look soon became codified and co-opted into new cliches. It wasn’t until Helmet came along that image became somewhat optional. Suddenly, four regular guys with short hair, T-shirts and work pants were awkwardly vying for stardom. Even if they hadn’t intended to. It wasn’t just image archetypes that changed either. Until then, the guitar solo was still of central importance to a lot of popular rock hits. Eschewing all such extraneous frippery, Helmet favoured a no-nonsense, almost workmanlike approach to their art. No frills, no fat, no fucking about. The cover for Meantime fell in line with this aesthetic, borrowing a 1979 image from urban documentarian photographer David Plowden, entitled Puddler In Blast Furnace Cast House, Steel Mill. East Chicago, Indiana .  Just as hard-bitten and industrial was the sound of the music contained therein.

Clocking in at a shade under 37 minutes, its 10 tracks are both economic and blistering, kickstarted by the rolling, tumbling stomp of the Steve Albini-engineered In The Meantime . At first it’s the rhythm section that hits. From start to finish, John Stanier’s drums and Henry Bogdan’s bass work in tandem with a piston-like precision. Then there’s the riffs. The endless, bludgeoning riffs. Jazz-trained Hamilton’s staccato style synergised with Peter Mengede’s rhythm guitar perfectly, bulking out the duo’s drop-D tuned blunt force power. An employee at CBGB's once approvingly likened the result to "icepicks to the forehead". In full flow Helmet were a quartet to be reckoned with, virtuosic in an entirely new and different way that would spark inspiration that fired off in a multitude of musical directions. Although rarely celebrated for his vocal ability or lyrical contributions, the full-throated bark of Hamilton’s delivery and occasionally caustic barbs (‘T o die young is far too boring these days’ ) played their part too. As did Wharton Tiers’ engineering and the triggered samples and clinical style of Andy Wallace’s mixing job. Supposedly irked by his remix of In The Meantime , when Steve Albini was in negotiations to work with Nirvana on In Utero he insisted on a clause being added into the contract stipulating that Wallace would be forbidden from touching his recordings. These disparate, combined disciplines worked a charm for Helmet. It might not have made them the next Nirvana, much less U2, but despite lacking even a sliver of commerciality, Meantime met with success, peaking at number 68 on the Billboard 200, and receiving, in 1994, RIAA classification as a 'gold' record in acknowledgement of 500,000 sales in the US alone. 

Such numbers opened doors. In time, the band would go on to feature in big deal video games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , and secure prime spots on Hollywood movie soundtracks like Judgment Night and The Crow . Despite charting higher than its predecessor (hitting number 45 in the US) 1994 follow-up album Betty didn’t sell as well, but it was just as powerful, widening the band’s musical scope and producing a clutch of cult classics in its own right. Helmet would eventually breakup in 1997, only to return for a second stint in 2004, albeit with Page Hamilton the only founding member to have performed under the name since then. 

That classic line-up of Hamilton, Mengede, Stanier and Bogdan undoubtedly captured something special on Meantime , however. Its influence and legacy can be found all over the alternative music and metal spheres. Through the years, Helmet songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Soulfly, former touring partners Faith No More, and Pig Destroyer. In 2016 a tribute album, Meantime Redux featured covers of the record (among other band tracks) by a range of underground noisemakers, from KEN Mode to Fuck The Facts. Listen closely and you can trace a line through artists such as Tool, System Of A Down, Far, Filter, Silverchair, Norma Jean, and a host of nu-metal acts, forever indebted to the sound and spirit of the New Yorkers. Without Helmet, Deftones might not even exist. As they started to come into their own on 1997’s Around The Fur , that influence couldn’t be clearer.

“Every band should wish to aspire to the originality and genius of Helmet,” the Sacramento band's late bassist Chi Cheng once proclaimed. “[They are] an inspiration to fans and musicians alike.”

In saluting a band who defy easy classification, perhaps it's best to defer to Beavis and Butthead, even 30 years on. Helmet are cool. And Meantime will forever remain an ice-cold classic.

Formerly the Senior Editor of Rock Sound magazine and Senior Associate Editor at Kerrang!, Northern Ireland-born David McLaughlin is an award-winning writer and journalist with almost two decades of print and digital experience across regional and national media.

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STONE TEMPLE PILOTS – TINY MUSIC…SONGS FROM THE VATICAN GIFT SHOP (1996)

DEEP SIX – COMPILATION (1986)

MOTHER LOVE BONE – SHINE EP (1989)

HELMET – Meantime (1992)

June 23rd, 1992 HELMET released their second album, Meantime, through Interscope Records. The sound of Helmet is distinctive, yet difficult to describe. Few bands straddle the alternative rock/metal fanbase like them. Equally loved by the alternative rock, grunge and metal crowds. In the ’90s, they shared stages with alternative rock royalty like Nirvana, TAD, Melvins, L7 and The Jesus Lizard as well as metal gods like Slayer, Sepultura, Overkill and Obituary.

Page Hamilton created something special with HELMET, a heavy, primal energy matched with monstrous syncopated guitar riffs, clean/shrieked vocals, and a gutteral groove. In 1990, the New York based HELMET unleashed their debut album, Strap it On, through the noise rock label Amphetamine Reptile Records, a label known for releasing music from the Melvins and The Jesus Lizard, among others. While the bands debut had noise rock leanings, it hinted at the seismic riffs and crossover appeal the band would later hone with Meantime and, 1994’s, Betty.

In 2022 Page Hamilton spoke about his early influences and how they shaped the HELMET sound

“I had gone through my prog-rock phase when I was 17, 18 years old, and I just had no interest in wearing the musician cape and being like, “We’re going to show you the time signatures that we’re playing,” like King Crimson or Yes or whatever. I like that music, but I had outgrown it. I really liked noisy stuff and I really liked funky stuff. I really love AC/DC and Sonic Youth and Led Zeppelin, so somewhere in there is Helmet. People miss that about Led Zeppelin and especially AC/DC; they miss AC/DC’s complexities within the simplicity. It wasn’t necessarily that I made an intellectual choice, like solving a math problem. I knew that this felt good and I was fascinated by it. I would sit on the subway and drum time signatures, three against four. From that a riff would come..”

As 1991’s alternative rock and grunge explosion took hold, major labels scrambled to cut deals with any band remotely associated with the sound. HELMET weren’t immune to the attention and signed a deal with major label Interscope Records who handed them a sizable amount of cash (reported to be $1 million) to record what would become Meantime.

Page Hamilton, Peter Mengede, John Stainer and Henry Bogdan entered the studio between December 1991 and February 1992 and turned out an album for the ages. Recording took place at Fun City Studios in New York City and sessions at Chicago Recording Company Studios with Steve Albini which produced the standout track “In The Meantime.” The album was mixed by Andy Wallace.

Meantime is arguably one of the most influential and overlooked albums of the ’90s. It threw the rule book out the window. This music felt raw, real and crushing. It’s drenched with emotional power and edge of your seat thrills. Nobody sounded like HELMET, their start-stop riffing and minimalist, clean attack pulsated through the speakers quite like nothing before it and the ’90s alternative rock and metal masses lapped it up.

Opening with a wall of noise, “In The Meantime” quickly settles into a very “Helmet-esque” groove, setting the scene for the rest of the album. This relentless attack never loses sight of where the power of the track lies. John Stainer was the perfect drummer for a band like HELMET. Possessing some of the heaviest limbs to ever pummell a kit, his unique drumming both anchors and propels the band throughout the album.

“Ironhead” follows with a super tight, snaking riff, filled with jerky stop start passages and off time accents. Hamiltion adopts his sneering shout and delivers one of his atonal solos.

An album standout “Give It” follows, opening with a bouncing bass line, the song widens out into a mid-tempo sledge-hammer. Page gives us his clean vocal throughout.

“Unsung” was the hit single from the album, and arguably HELMET’s biggest song and it’s easy to see why. It has all the hallmarks of what makes HELMET so special. Tight groove, off time beats, thrilling shifts of pace and a masterclass in tension and release dynamics.

Speaking of tension and release, “Turned Out” nails it. With Hamilton back in his barking man mode, the verses are a syncopated riff fest, jagged stop-start stabs of sound fill the listener with an anxious sense of dread until the chorus opens up into a devastating emotional pay off.

“Better” starts with a palm muted marching riff that opens out into a head nodding belter. Page’s dual vocal attack is on display as he flits between his aggressive howl and clean, melodic vocals. “You Borrowed” continues the formula of intense groove, pounding riffs and melodic counter melodies. “FBLA II” (with its insane drum breakdown) and “Role Model” bring the album to a close.

At the heart of HELMET’s approach is the complexity of simplicity, much like Page’s comment above about the influence of AC/DC, who were, as he suggests, masters of the complexity of simplicity. HELMET too has full control over that approach, modernising it for a ’90s audience.

HELMET’s reach across the genre divides is impressive. The ’90s was a melting pot of rock styles comingling and collaborating, but HELMET crossed wider divides than nearly all their contemporaries. They did it not trying to please everyone, but by conviction and truth of purpose.

Meantime is still a vital album. The influence of the band, and this album, stretched to the end of the decade and beyond. Today its ideas and approach can still be heard in the music of many bands, through many genres. But none ever come close to the earth shattering drive of HELMET themselves. The ’90s coughed up incredible music and life affirming albums. Meantime stands proud among the very best of a great decade.

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In the Meantime: Helmet’s landmark album at 20

The most important records in any listener’s collection are not always the first purchases or big names, but rather the ones that opened a door. These gateway experiences can be at once exciting and confusing, disorienting and invigorating, perhaps even a little uncomfortable. Yet when you’re an adult, particularly one whose job is to listen to new music on a daily basis, it doesn’t happen as often as you’d like it to. Those moments of head-buzzing clarity when something takes you out of your comfort zone and plops you square into a world that seems a lot bigger, a lot more bewildering and somehow more awesome still arrive at unexpected times, and they do still happen — though they tend to exist farther out at the fringes than they used to. But any “eureka!” moment of the past five to 10 years scarcely registers in comparison to having my ears blown off for the first time by Helmet ‘s Meantime .

My introduction to Helmet came thanks to my brother during Christmas break, around the time of my 11th birthday. I had been slowly but surely amassing a collection of grunge cassettes via BMG and Columbia House — Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice In Chains — not quite mature enough to fully grasp the gravity of songs about alienation and heroin, but close enough to adolescence to know that I liked loud, distorted, crunchy rock music. I was still a ways off from getting into punk, and definitely not ready for metal just yet, but somewhere in the recesses of my mind was a voracious appetite for ugly, destructive sounds and all I needed was the catalyst. On a chance afternoon, my brother plopped a pair of headphones on my head, cued up “In the Meantime,” the album’s screeching, chugging leadoff track, and set me off on a life-long course through sonic abrasion.

Meantime blew my mind, certainly, serving as an introduction to a whole variety of unfamiliar concepts — noise rock, post-hardcore, metal. And the ambiguity of the blurry, shovel-wielding man in a protective suit on the cover left me stumped for years as to its true image. Yet regardless of my own personal reaction, when Meantime arrived 20 years ago, it was a pretty big deal. In the early ’90s, primarily as a reaction to the mega-success of Nirvana’s Nevermind (and by proxy the signing of Sonic Youth), major labels began seeking out and subsequently drawing up contracts for any band with any tenuous connection to grunge. Helmet, in a sense, didn’t seem like logical candidates. The band’s classically trained frontman and guitarist Page Hamilton, formerly of Band of Susans, had spent some time playing with avant garde icons like Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. And the band’s first album, Strap It On , displayed an abrasive, shrieking noise rock sound much closer to their Amphetamine Reptile labelmates than, well, Nirvana.

Despite only selling around 10,000 copies (admittedly not a bad figure) and featuring few songs with any commercial viability, Strap It On nonetheless piqued Interscope’s interest enough to offer the band a $1 million advance, which seems like a lot of money. In retrospect, however, it probably wasn’t a total loss — the album was certified Gold in the United States, and reportedly sold 2 million copies worldwide. Still, a band like Helmet seemed risky for the time. Raw, heavy, prone to discordant solos and rigid, metallic rhythms, Helmet made for an odd mainstream candidate, and barring the near-legendary single “Unsung,” didn’t deliver too many pop concessions on Meantime . Yet they also didn’t wallow in the rusty scratch of Strap It On . With more resources at their disposal, and a sharpened crunch, Helmet entered an entirely new stage, and came out of the studio with a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece of minimal power-chord punch.

The opening, Steve Albini-produced cacophony of “ In the Meantime ” comes down like the proverbial gauntlet, introducing the listener to a thick, massively grooving churn of a record. It’s not long before the song’s opening squall transforms into a thunderous drop-D tug-of-war. Page Hamilton’s scream, which was far more unhinged on their debut, is a more commanding bark, disciplined but harsh, until the coda, in which he unleashes an agonized roar. Just one of nearly an album’s worth of taut, perfect and remarkably streamlined alternative metal tracks, it presents a band with tighter focus and direction, and a deceptively simple songwriting style that surpassed any of their prior noise rock exercises.

In contrast to “In the Meantime,” however, Meantime contains a number of rhythmically complex numbers that, contrastingly, are strangely radio friendly. “Give It” utilizes jazzy rhythms and a healthy dose of empty space, as Hamilton, sounding more like a sedated Ozzy Osbourne, nonchalantly sings lines like “ Killing hurts/ has to be done. ” “ Unsung ,” which became an alternative radio staple that still ends up in rotation now and then, is by far the most streamlined and accessible track on the album, and for that matter, their entire discography. Its riffs are immortal, of course, but the secret weapon is drummer John Stanier, whose well-timed piccolo snare snaps give the track an essential punctuation. An even stronger showcase of Stanier’s superhuman abilities can be found in “You Borrowed,” which closes with a percussive attack that’s more tenderization than time keeping.

Meantime occupies an interesting space in rock music. It’s a perfect metal album without actually adhering to many metal characteristics, and it’s a stunning noise rock record performed with far more discipline than “noise” is meant to entail. It also occupies a unique space in the band’s own discography. Their 1994 follow-up, Betty , threw far more experimental elements into the mix, and 1997’s Aftertaste , while more consistent in sound, didn’t have the same cohesion in quality. They unceremoniously broke up in 1998, which by all accounts was amicable, though in a webchat in 2000, Hamilton commented, “we found it hard to look at each other anymore.” Hamilton has since re-launched Helmet and released three more albums. In 1992, however, Helmet achieved perfection, which is a triumph few bands are fortunate enough to pull off.

Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.

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HELMET To Perform Entire 'Meantime' Album On European Tour

Seminal rock group HELMET will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of its classic "Meantime" album by embarking on a five-week European tour in March/April 2012 and playing the LP in its entirety at each and every show.

A full listing of tour dates can be seen at this location .

A special pre-sale for HELMET fans will begin at 9 a.m. GMT this Thursday, November 30. Pre-sale tickets will only be available at www.helmetmusic.com or on the band's official Facebook page. The general public on-sale will begin Monday, December 5.

HELMET 's second album, "Meantime" , was released in 1992 on Interscope Records . The LP peaked at No. 68 on The Billboard 200 chart and was certified gold in 1994 by the Recording Industry Association Of America ( RIAA ) for shipments in excess of 500,000 copies. John Franck of Allmusic labeled "Meantime" "arguably one of the most influential and overlooked rock records of the '90s." He praised the music "colored by Teutonic riffs, with only 'Unsung' hinting at a gasp of commercial accessibility." Steffan Chirazi of Kerrang! described the album as "a wall of angry, bitter and agonized New York street cries."

HELMET 's latest full-length album, "Seeing Eye Dog" , came out on September 7, 2010. The band's first LP since 2006's critically acclaimed "Monochrome" and its seventh album overall was made available on the indie Work Song label (with physical distribution by Redeye and direct-to-fan digital delivery by Topspin ). The CD was produced by HELMET mainman Page Hamilton , with additional production by Toshi Kasai and vocal production by Mark Renk .

Hamilton is joined by drummer Kyle Stevenson , guitarist Dan Beeman and bassist Chris Traynor ; HELMET 's live bassist is Dave Case .

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