Helmet occupies a crucial, if somewhat controversial place in rock history. Signing to Amphetamine Reptile in 1989, they represented a new level of punk penetration into heavy metal. By merging crushing riffs with scalding waves of feedback and packaging it all in an everyman presentation that eschewed some of the genre’s more bombastic trappings, they patched into an audience that might have had trouble relating to a Slayer or Obituary album. The buzz that surrounded their debut Strap It On was such that Interscope (allegedly) wound up signing them for a million-dollar contract in the wake of a massive bidding war. Despite moving a boatload of units with Meantime, they never achieved the superstar status that had been projected upon them, and they gradually faded from view before disbanding (temporarily) in 1999.
But the key to Helmet’s thorny legacy (and the reason so many people write them off) is the shadow they’ve cast over heavy music in the 90s and early 00s. Like a heavy metal Velvet Underground, Helmet was never a household name, but their records found their way into the earholes of a lot of angry kids in bands. Helmet were pioneers of drop-D tuning and staccato, groove-based riffs, both of which would become ubiquitous in the decade following their earliest releases. While there were a fair number of bands who took elements of this sound and ran with them in interesting directions (Pantera, Tool, and, hell, maybe even The Jesus Lizard), this also means that Helmet had a hand in birthing nu metal.
My first exposure to the band came in high school when my buddy John gave me a mix tape with their 1993 reprise of “Born Annoying” on it. (Still my preferred version, although the only standalone video I could find on YouTube was the original 1989 demo version, below.)
“Born Annoying” was pure Helmet, pivoting between verses built around a repetitive, frustratingly compressed riff, and a totally headbang-able hook for the chorus, and climaxing with a solo that gradually devolved into shrieks and wails. Best of all, though, are the lyrics. Paige Hamilton bellows, in his angriest, most throat-rending-ist snarl:
I open my mouth
I talk about me
I follow you around
I talk about me
The goofiness of the song’s subject matter cuts a pretty stark contrast to the ruthless construction of its melody. So much so that going on 15 years later, this sad sack narrator still elicits a chuckle from me.
“Born Annoying” is a perfect illustration of why it’s wrong to throw baby Helmet out with the nu-metal bathwater. Regardless of what they helped give birth to, Helmet wrote the kind of funny, catchy, and utterly brutalizing songs that the Korns, Limp Bizkits, and Static Xes that sprang up in their wake could only dream of. Helmet was a mutant gamete swimming around in alt-rock’s uterus, an abrasive genetic suicide bomb stuffed with a stew of punk and metal chromosomes that somehow gave rise to a new breed of commercially accessible heavy music. Check ‘em out for the history lesson. Come back to them for the riffs that’ll take the top of your goddamn head off.
