Helmet - Renovation Album: Aftertaste [1997]
like many influential bands, helmet were 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 like sonic youth, 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. the group signed to the interscope label soon after their first album and released its breakthrough 1992 album, "meantime". 1994's "betty" saw hamilton and the band crafting more versatile songs - and at times even heavier - than "meantime". despite the success of certain songs on soundtracks, "betty"proved to be a critical success but a commercial failure. it pushed at the boundaries of their sound but perhaps too much for their audience's liking. as a result, the band returned to straightforward helmet territory with "aftertaste", restoring grinding guitars and pummeling rhythms to prominence. theoretically, this approach should have made "aftertaste" a more immediate, visceral record, but the second half of the album suffers from its lack of ambition. without the invention of "betty" or the gut-level force of "meantime", it drags on by the end but still, the first half-dozen songs are fantastic, with "pure" and "renovation" displaying the riffs and hooks that made helmet one of the more intriguing alternative metal bands of the 90's.
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