It's been four-and-a-half years since Helmet last released their most recent studio album Dead To The World. Founding member Page Hamilton was a featured guest on a recent episode of the Thunder Underground podcast, where he talked about the current state of the band, who have two new releases on the way (a studio album featuring original material and a record of song covers), as well as archival live recordings.

About the new releases, Hamilton said: "I've wanted to do an album for a couple of years?a new album. But we're sort of at the mercy of the record label. I'm talking to my managers like 'Okay can we go to another label? They're not stepping up and labels are having a hard time figuring out how to make money off of album sales and I'm sympathetic. I understand that. But I have a deal with them and I'm supposed to, so what we're doing is right now, is I also have a live album, we have a live album on the deal so we're gonna release a CBGBs show from '90 and a 'Big Day Out' show from I think '92, something like that?the first time we played Australia? It had to be maybe '93, it was post-'Meantime', pre-'Betty'. And then the CB show, we didn't have an album out yet. Those were the very early songs like 'Impressionable', which was an AmRep 7″, I can't remember what else is on there. One song didn't have a title and I turned it into an intro to 'Impressionable'. And we did 'Sinatra' and 'Murder'. So, there were songs that were going to be on 'Strap It On'. So yeah, but we're still releasing those two live EPs and then we did these all these cover songs during the recording of 'Dead To The World'. And it was kind of like, we're gonna release, then somebody at the management office screwed up so that set us back a year. It was like all this, one thing after another. So now we're finally, the label's like, 'Oh, we'd like to be involved in that. We'll release those.' Because I've had the artwork done. They've been mixed. And you know one song was mixed by Jay Baumgardner and mastered by Howie [Weinberg] during the 'Dead To The World' mixing and mastering sessions. And so we thought we had it ready to go. It's just kind of like it's, I, I understand. I mean the music business is looking for you know an instant hit. instant gratification. We put this out like Taylor Swift, and she puts a million dollars in our pockets on day two. That's not Helmet. But it's nice to have our stuff out there to kind of expand the catalog, because I feel good about the catalogue that we've built, you know, over the all these years."

Source:	facebook.com
Band profile:	Helmet