X-Press Online: HELMET Rediscovery

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HELMET Rediscovery

New York’s post-hardcore/metal outfit Helmet return our way with a show at Capitol this Friday, March 30, supported by The Meaning Of and Heavy Weight Champ. NICK SNELLING speaks with founder, Page Hamilton.

You’ve heard of the theory of six degrees of separation, right? How everyone on the planet is connected by a relatively small chain of individuals to each other. Literally speaking, you know someone who knows someone, who knows this person, and so on.
Chances are, however dubious or limited you regard your own social network, you could probably track such a tenuous link between yourself and Page Hamilton, frontman and riffmeister for seminal New York post-metal act, Helmet. And I would no doubt be the same, if it wasn’t for the fact that a friend of mine just joined the band. Looks like my six degrees of separation have gone down to one.
Jimmy Thompson, the brand new axe-man for Helmet, has led a pretty colourful life. A cop in Western Australia, he hung up his spurs and left the police force to focus on, of all things, a metal band. This band, Full Scale, moved to Melbourne and after a few years secured an international record deal in the States. Signed to Columbia, the band relocated to LA and due to a chain of unfortunate events and personal enmity eventually imploded. Meanwhile, Jimmy, the former detective cum metal-guitarist, met and fell in love – naturally – with a porn star. Then, just when he thought his musical dream has ended, he got a gig as second fiddle in Hamilton’s reformed Helmet, and has since been touring with Guns N’ Roses. Some guys have all the luck.
It’s feasible Jimmy was like anyone who grew up playing heavy-rock in the mid-’90s – busting out riffs in some smelly rehearsal room, jamming on Helmet’s bare-knuckle hard-as-nails prison rock, and revelling in Hamilton’s lurching slabs of distorted de-tuned riffage, waves of dissonant guitar-lines and gruff emotive shout. Back then, Helmet were gods to any teenage guitarist. Albums such Meantime (1992), Betty (1994) and even Aftertaste (1997) eschewed the traditional concept of heavy music, trademarked the drop-d power-groove in 5/4, and pioneered a whole new trend in music. Even now, these albums stand on their own as definitive texts in post-metal. A no-brainer, I suppose, that Jimmy was happy to join. Still, how the hell does an ex-Perth cop end up playing guitar for the legendary Helmet?
“He’s a man, you know?” replies Hamilton, matter-of-factly. “There’s not really a lot of drama with the guy, which is unusual. I met him about a year and a half ago when his band (Full Scale) was in the States. I got along really well with him. He’s just a really down-to-earth, no bullshit kinda guy. Anyway, I had been looking for a new guitar-player and it had been a whole fiasco trying to get the band back together.
“So I said to him ‘are you interested in jamming?’ so he came and we played and he was real nervous, as one would be in that kind of situation. Then afterwards he was like ‘well, thanks, it’s been fun’, but I said ‘would you be interested in coming over and working on some stuff with me, I get a really good vibe from you’. I think he was surprised I wanted to work with him, but he was like ‘yeah! Of course!’ And since then, he’s just worked his ass off and it’s really worked out. For me, it’s flattering that someone would be interested in trying to work out this music that I’ve been playing for all these years.”

For all their veteran status, Helmet has been plagued by lineup changes. The loss of drummer extraordinaire John Stanier in 1998, a rapid succession of fill-in guitarists, dwindling album sales, personal difficulties and endemic in-fighting has all contributed to the band’s stalled output over the years, so I wonder if genuine friendship within the band is now what matters the most?
“At this point, definitely it is,” agrees Hamilton. “I mean, I have great memories of the people I have played with over the years, and I appreciate their input, their musicianship, but sometimes you go through so much together that it’s hard to have any sort of personal relationship or forgive and forget. Whereas now, realistically, I’m at the end of my rock career so if I base it upon someone’s mind and personality first, then I’m going to enjoy myself, which is really important to me at this point in my life.”
So what does Helmet mean to Hamilton now? “I discovered, in having some time away from it, that nothing could replace it. It fills some kind of my music personality. It makes me happy. I like to do other things as well musically, and if it was only Helmet then I might get bored, but Helmet is an incredible outlet for me, musically and emotionally.”
The general consensus from the fans is that after the poorly received Size Matters (2004), the new album Monochrome (2006) sees a return to form for Helmet. Does he subscribe to this?
“Nah, I never think of any record like that,” demurs the frontman. “I wasn’t trying to go back, and if you listen, it’s so different to any other record like Strap It On or Meantime. The only similarity is that Strap It On and Monochrome were both recorded in the same studio with the same engineer, Wharton Tiers. Other than that, the song structures are a lot more complex, and lyrically I’ve moved away from the kind of stream-of-consciousness thing that I was adamant about pursuing back then, and there’s more narrative to the songs.”
With Helmet back on their feet, Page Hamilton and co. are looking forward not only to an Australian tour, but the prospect of a new album. “Australia has always been one of my favourite places, and I can’t wait to get down there. We’ll probably get in some trouble in some of Jimmy’s old haunts as well,” says the singer.
“Then we do a European tour, come back to the States for some scattered shows, and then, if it’s still fun and we’re working well together, we’ll see what we can come up with. The hope is to be working on a new album before the end of the year.”

Posted on March 28, 2007 04:22 PM

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