Helmet’s Page Hamilton in Cincinnati, October 10, 2023
NICK MARCUM (HELMET)
IN LEFT, PAGE Hamilton may have just turned in Helmet’s most political album yet. Above a patented mix of drop-tuned riffs and hard-edged rhythmic displacement, the alt-metal icon sounds off on anything from cyclical patterns of U.S. gun violence (“Gun Fluf ”) to the unearned, puffed-chest politicking of the modernday Republican Party (“Big Shot,”“Dislocated”). Though Hamilton tells Guitar World he’s generally avoided standing on a soapbox throughout Helmet’s nearly 35-year career, Left’s treatises still speak to a broader trend within his hefty songbook.
“It’s just character assassination,” he explains of a lyrical forte. “My ex-fatherin-law said to me, ‘All you do is write ‘fuck you’ songs. They’re really good ‘fuck you’ songs, but they’re still just ‘fuck you’ songs.’ I told him, ‘Well, everybody has to be good at something, right?’”