“I became this musician because of jazz. I mean, I still wake up every day and work on Charlie Parker’s Hot House!” Even with a broken finger, Helmet’s Page Hamilton is one of the all-time great heavy riffsmiths – but he owes it all to jazz

Page Hamilton.

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.