Helmet

Quintessential noise-rockers from lower Manhattan, Helmet is a rhythm juggernaut. Guitars, bass, and drums play interconnecting lines and shift tempos with machinelike precision. The quartet's tight, taut sound bridges the gap between thrash metal and the art-damaged vocabulary of New York City guitar innovators such as Glenn Branca and the Band of Susans, both of whom employed Helmet founding member Page Hamilton. The music's cold relentlessness is broken by Hamilton's hellish wails and terse, punishing guitar solos. Yet it's the band's tightly wound compositions and canny use of silence that distinguish the debut, Strap It On, from typical headbanging fare.

Once relying solely on dynamics to carry the music, the band introduced melody and actual singing to its repertoire on its 1991 single "Unsung," which is reprised on Meantime. Betty expands the musical choices considerably, touching on Wes Montgomery ("Beautiful Love") and primordial blues ("Sam Hell"). By Aftertaste, the formula has been perfected: Hamilton stretches guitar lines like high-tension wires across a grid of cross-rhythms, and when the wire snaps, it's cathartic. But too often the band's workmanlike rock sounds like work, and Hamilton's get-a-grip, commonsense lyrics take no risks. Unsung culls the stronger tracks from the quartet's hit-and-miss albums, and it builds a persuasive case for Helmet as songwriters as well as sonic ball-crushers. (GREG KOT)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide