PAGE HAMILTON BRINGS STACCATO STABS OF FEEDBACK, AVANT-GARDE SHOEGAZE AND TWISTED BLUES TO THE NYC ALT-METALERS’ LATEST
By Gregory Adams
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 modern-day 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-father-in-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?’”
To be sure, Left — the band’s ninth album, fourth since reuniting in 2004, and first in seven years — has Hamilton expressing himself with antagonistic, full-throated fervor. Helmet’s latest is likewise a nuanced, parameter-expanding release for the veteran unit. After a few years focusing on film-scoring projects, Hamilton got back into the post-hardcore groove at the top of 2023 to write the 11-song Left. He and co-guitarist Dan Beeman generally juxtapose punishingly percussive rhythms with rich, seventh-and-11th incorporating chord phrasings — all the more impressive considering Hamilton tracked this all with a broken fretting finger — though the band scale down the s
