Helmet

Forefathers of the post-hardcore/punk genre, HELMET will return July 18 with MONOCHROME, marking their first release on Warcon Records, one of the leading post-hardcore/punk labels in the industry today. This summer, the band -- founding vocalist/guitarist PAGE HAMILTON, guitarist CHRIS TRAYNOR and new members, drummer MIKE JOST and bassist JEREMY CHATELAIN -- will play to thousands of music lovers across North America as a main stage-headlining act on the Vans Warped Tour from June 15 through August 13. The album’s first single “Gone” will arrive at radio in late June.

For MONOCHROME, PAGE enlisted Strap It On and Meantime collaborator Wharton Tiers to co-produce and return to the organic sound the band is known for. Tiers recorded the band’s first two releases Strap It On and Meantime, the latter of which sold over a million copies and defined the brusque element of American’s underground rock scene. The HELMET sound sparked a new brand of metal, crossing all traditional music boundaries, paving the way for bands like Chevelle, Deftones, Killswitch Engage, Norma Jean and Silverchair, among many others. The New York Times called HELMET “a band that made important connections between indie-rock and metal…” (September 12, 2004).

"Wharton was my only choice to co-produce this project with me,” notes HAMILTON. “Apart from the sounds he can get in his studio, he was also a major influence in terms of helping me shape my guitar playing.”

HELMET’s catalog also includes Betty (1994) and Aftertaste (1996), after which they broke up in 1998. In 2004, HAMILTON rejoined with TRAYNOR and two other established players to release and tour in support of the critically acclaimed Size Matters. Jim Farber at New York Daily News praised the album, noting: “Helmet’s smart rock has returned at just the right time.”

Like many influential bands, Helmet was born out of an unusual set of influences. Oregon-born guitarist and founder Page Hamilton had actually moved to New York City to study jazz, but found inspiration in the late '80s through post-punk acts Sonic Youth, Killing Joke, and Big Black, and envisioned a group that combined then-unusual tunings (particularly dropped-D) with uneven and jazz-like time signatures and harmonies. The result was Helmet, the East Coast's answer to Seattle's then-underground sensation Soundgarden. Hamilton recruited bassist Henry Bogdan from Oregon, along with Australian guitarist Peter Mengede and Florida drummer John Stanier for the group's first incarnation. Helmet's independent label debut EP, Strap It On, showcased the group's raw power -- both instrumentally and in Hamilton's growling vocals -- through tracks like the mocking "Sinatra" and rocking "Bad Mood." Signed to the Interscope label soon thereafter, the same lineup released its breakthrough 1992 CD Meantime. MTV aired three videos by Helmet, then the only band close to the Seattle grunge sound on the East Coast, in "Give It," "In the Meantime," and the distorted, stop-and-start showcase "Unsung." Hamilton, Bogdan, and Stanier collaborated with Irish rap group House of Pain on "Just Another Victim," for the 1993 film Judgment Night, after Mengede left the band. The popular soundtrack (with its unorthodox mix of rappers and alternative bands like Ice-T and Slayer, Sir Mix-a-Lot and Mudhoney) created even more of a demand for Helmet's next CD. Replacing Mengede with guitarist Rob Echeverria on 1994's Betty, Hamilton crafted an album even more versatile -- and at times even heavier -- than Meantime. The song "Milquetoast" appeared on the soundtrack to the hit film The Crow; Stanier's unrelenting drumming drove tracks like "I Know," and Hamilton's jazz background showed on the cover of Dizzy Gillespie's "Beautiful Love." Yet Betty proved to be a critical success but a commercial failure, its versatility relegating it to the cutout bins. Echeverria left Helmet in the mid-'90s to join Biohazard, and the band bought time to refocus by releasing the Born Annoying collection of B-sides in 1995. Hamilton played all the guitar parts for 1997's Aftertaste -- but his vocals sounded like his heart just wasn't in a group in which he couldn't keep a rhythm guitarist, and the album proved a disappointment. After touring with Orange 9mm's Chris Traynor on guitar and much deliberation, Helmet disbanded in 1999. But the Helmet influence was heard throughout rock, whether by Hamilton's involvement with industrial groups (Nine Inch Nails) or indirectly through metal acts (System of a Down), and even the atonal distortion of rap-rock hybrids such as Korn and Limp Bizkit.

Helmet returned in 2004 when Hamilton recruited Traynor and a new rhythm section consisting of drummer John Tempesta (Rob Zombie, Testament) and bassist Frank Bello (Anthrax). Signed to Interscope, the group released Size Matters in October. They switched to Warcon/Fontana for 2006's Monochrome. ~ Bill Meredith, All Music Guide