Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Helmet's breakthrough album "Betty" saw a tour stop at The Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA performing the album in it's entirety. The album gained some notoriety in small part due to the album's fourth track "Milquetoast" being included in the very popular movie soundtrack for the movie "The Crow".
We entered the venue just over an hour before showtime to a pretty sparse crowd. I didn't find this surprising given that it was a Tuesday night. Slowly but surely though, people kept filing in until eventually there was a very decent sized crowd. I'd say the club was at least 80% full. Tonight's show featured an evening with HELMET with no opening acts. At approximately 8:15 pm, The band took the stage opening with the album's first track "Wilma's Rainbow" with the intensity of a dozen Doc Martins kicking you square in the nuts! The rest of the album continued with the same ferocity with each song having 3 times the power as they come across on CD. The energy in the room was whiplash inducing with a pit breaking out during damn near every song! One thing that stood out to me, was main man/guitarist Page Hamilton's use of 2 microphones. Anyone familiar with Helmet would know that Hamilton uses two different vocal deliveries. An aggressive hardcore type voice and a more melodic Ozzy Osbourne-esque voice. The microphone setup had 2 mics side by side, each one used for the appropriate vocal style.
A look at some of the band's previous setlists of this tour online shows an intermission after the "Betty" album followed by a set of other career spanning high points, but at this show, you could tell that Hamilton did not want to lose the energy in the room. I could see him mouth to his band mates "No break" as they went from "Betty's" last track "Same Hell" straight into "Ironhead", The second track of their previous groundbreaking album "Meantime". As the set progressed, I noticed a familiar pattern starting. "Holy shit! They are playing the Meantime album as well!" In between songs, Hamilton announced they were trying something different tonight, " We are gonna play the first side of "Meantime" tonight." I couldn't have been happier! Just then, they launched into their most popular hit "Unsung". If you had MTV back in '92 and ever saw Headbangers Ball or 120 Minutes, there is no way in hell you were unaware of this juggernaut of a song.
After side one was over, the band did their little fake end of show routine only to return 5 minutes later with a three song encore that climaxed with the song "In the Meantime" The first song from the "Meantime" album which I found strangely absent the first time around but realized "oh... they are saving that bad boy for last." Great choice, because that song proved to get the best response and the best pit of the night. Even more so than "Unsung" which kind of surprised me.
Being a fan of this band for the last 23 years, this was admittedly the first time I have seen them live. One downfall to seeing a show at The Chameleon Club is the local noise ordinance that has bands end much earlier than what other venues have. Again, previewing HELMET's previous setlists, tonight's show was considerably shorter by at least 6 to 7 songs. After seeing them tonight makes me wonder what the hell took me so long. But better late than never I guess. The fact is, these guys deliver live! Don't be a fool like me and put it off. This show will definitely stand out as a highlight of my concert going history and I'm positive it will be one of yours as well.
Setlist:
1.Wilma's Rainbow
2. I Know
3. Biscuits for Smut
4. Milquetoast
5. Tic
6. Rollo
7. Street Crab
8. Clean
9. Vaccination
10. Beautiful Love
11. Speechless
12. The Silver Hawaiian
13. Overrated
14. Sam Hell
15. Ironhead
16. Give It
17. Unsung
18. Turned Out
Encore
19. Rude
20. Distracted
21. In The Meantime
*Photography: Eric Klunk
