IT'S impossible not to be enthused by Helmet leader Page Hamilton's sheer love of music.
How many alternative rock or metal musicians can in one breath speak of being fascinated by a Mexican mariachi band, and in the next, talk of their undying appreciation of classical guitarists Christopher Parkening and Julian Bream?
In many ways Hamilton and Helmet have spent more than 30 years dispelling musical stereotypes.
Despite studying jazz and classical guitar at college, Hamilton fronted one of the most revered and influential alternative metal bands of the '90s.
Their rhythmically-driven metal and classic albums such as Meantime (1992) - which sold two million copies at the height of the Nirvana-led grunge wave - and 1994's Betty influenced bands like Grinspoon, Korn and System of a Down.
Even at 62, Hamilton remains an avid music fan. Throughout the Zoom interview with the Newcastle Herald, his enthusiasm was infectious as he constantly doodled on his 1936 Gibson acoustic.
"I'm writing a new album at the moment so every sense is heightened, every book I pick up, every new piece of music I hear," Hamilton says.
He explains that back in the '90s an English music journalist told him his passion for music would wane in middle-age, along with his libido.
"That hasn't happened to me yet," he says. "I'm 62 and maybe when when I hit 82 I'll lose interest in life and the human race.
"I don't think with this short amount of time we have on Earth, that losing interest in music could ever happen."
Over the decades Hamilton has seen the passion for music wane among many of his contemporaries.
"A lot of my friends are millionaire rock stars and they got seduced by a lifestyle over music," he says.
"Music was their initial motivation, I'm positive, and many of them, not all of them, were like, 'I have a $4 million house and I've got a mortgage, wife and kids'.
"It doesn't have to be that way."
While Hamilton is writing a follow-up to Helmet's 2016 album Dead To The World, firstly he's heading back to Australia for the first time since 2017 to perform best-of sets.
Helmet first toured Australia on the legendary 1993 Big Day Out tour, with Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Performances from that tour were released in 2021 on Helmet's Live and Rare album. It captures a band on the verge of breaking out.
"It's summertime and there's Bondi and Coogee in Sydney," he says. "We came from New York and it's 8000 below zero and cold and nasty and you get there and there's topless women running around on a beach."
The four Helmet lads fell in love with Coopers beer and Mudhoney, but Hamilton laughs that Cave and Bad Seeds member Blixa Bargeld weren't so friendly.
"For whatever reason they didn't like me or Helmet very much or they weren't very social," he says. "I said hello to Blixa, as we were staying in the same hotel, and he pretended like I was completely invisible.
"Nick was in a book shop in New York - and we'd just gotten back from Australia and had played shows together and been at parties - and I went up to him and he wouldn't even acknowledge me, he kept looking at books.
"I was like, 'Wow, bro you're not Paul McCartney'."
In 1994 Helmet would return to Australia for the Livid festival in Brisbane, and Hamilton remembers it fondly as being at the height of the band's popularity.
"That was an amazing day," he remembers. "It felt like Australia had discovered Helmet and no other band mattered.
"We had to stop the show a couple of times because people were climbing up the poles and jumping off and they were creating so much dust and dirt that there was this cloud and the stage was as slippery as an ice-skating rink."
Like many alternative bands of that time, Helmet were caught up in the post-Nevermind explosion in alternative music, as record companies scrambled to find the next Nirvana.
Helmet were signed by Universal's Interscope Records following their 1990 debut Strap It On, but Hamilton says it became apparent quickly the A&R men didn't really understand the band.
"You thought at the time, because I was so naive, that they loved what we do and they like me," he says. "My bass player Henry [Bogdan] was a little wiser, he wouldn't give them the time of day.
"As the face of the band and the leader I had to be nice. They're not all bad, I guess.
"A guy from the label came in when we were recording Give It on Meantime and the songs starts off in 4/5 time, a strange jazz time with this swing-groove thing.
"And he says, 'Hey man, that sounds like another [Smells Like] Teen Spirit.' So you realised they had no clue whatsoever."
Classic line-up members Bodgan and drummer John Stainer exited in the initial break-up in 1998. Hamilton reformed Helmet in 2004 with a new line-up.
"It changed when money came into the picture," Hamilton says.
"That time I spent writing the songs, developing the vocabulary meant I got paid more and it changed the dynamic in the band as it often does with money."
Helmet kick off their Australian tour with their first Newcastle show in 10 years at the Cambridge Hotel on April 20.
