Handsome

Handsome - Epic Records

What happens when guitar players from Helmet and Quicksand join forces? Good, good things. Handsome's eponymous debut features the muscular guitar work of Peter Mengede, a member of Helmet through their career launching Meantime, and Tom Capone, present on both Quicksand LPs. Not only is the album graced by their fine guitar work, but it also benefits from production by Terry Date, producer for such jackhammer giants as Pantera and Prong. But Handsome is more than mere fist-pumping mosh fodder. The band employs a songwriting style that is at once embraceable and edgy, and vocalist Jeremy Chatelain is so tip-of-your-tongue unplaceably familiar, you'll rack your brain trying to figure out why you recognize his voice. Things get downright hummable at times, but Mengede and Capone coat the album with just enough dissonant muck to keep the atmosphere pretty sinister.

Stand out tracks include Left of Heaven, which has a wonderfully seasick hook in the verse and thick sheets of guitar at its chorus, and Going To Panic, Thrown Away, and Lead Bellied feature trademark sonic elements of the guitarists' previous employers. But let's not focus on the past. Handsome hoes new rows here, as on the bouncy Dim The Lights, the trippy My Mind's Eye, and the mournful Quiet Liar. They even come dangerously close to Green Day territory on Waiting, but again, the massive guitar teamwork keeps things a little too ugly for mall appeal.

Many of the twelve songs here would do fine on radio, yet surely, none of them will land there. The album came out just prior to Handsome's St. Louis Valentine's Day opening slot for Outback young 'uns Silverchair, and it shows great promise.