*** Helmet

AFTERTASTE

(Interscope)

The same summer ('92) that White Zombie seemed to scrawl heavy metal's epitaph, Helmet declared themselves the brand new heavies. Meantime (Interscope) was a dense dollop of industrialized sonic wallpaper, welding Page Hamilton's avant-guitar training (with Glenn Branca and Band of Susans) to pop convention (shades of Black Sabbath, maybe), framing a dozen detuned hardcore riffs in patterns of repetitive grind and roar. The result was a near-perfect match of function and form. It wasn't so much a revolution as a blueprint; there were dozens upon dozens of quickie follow-ups to Meantime that were eager to mimic the new metal syntax. Helmet's own, 1994's Betty, was but one of the less interesting ones.

Aftertaste repositions Helmet as the best Helmet-style band out there. At times they suspend the wiggy time signatures in favor of straight-faced Zeppelin-ated stomp ("It's Easy To Get Bored"). But Aftertaste spends more time building on their trademark dynamics: mathcore menace smeared with searing open-chord clang and wistfully abstract melodies. And when "Driving Nowhere" and "Birth Defect" work some unnamable factory-noise chord into a riff that's all rhythmic mayhem, you remember why Helmet were once the heaviest thing around. If they're not quite that anymore, at least they're masters of their own domain.

-- Carly Carioli