HELMET : A Loud, Intense Page from a Very Different School

Page Hamilton doesn’t think his old jazz guitar teachers will be too thrilled with the music he’s making now as frontman of the very loud, very intense, very rock, New York-based band Helmet.

“Jack Wilkins, my teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, will probably think what we’re doing is interesting, but he’ll give me hell,” Hamilton said. “And I told another old teacher that I was playing a Stratocaster through a Marshall amp and he said, ‘What are you doing? Why would you do that?’ ”

Hamilton hopes his music will answer the questions for itself.

“The music I’ve always loved, be it jazz, rock or classical, relate in spirit and intensity, whether it’s a Bartok string quartet or Coltrane or Killing Joke,” he said.

An Oregon native, Hamilton, 32, moved to New York in 1985. After finishing his studies, he hung out at the intersection of avant-garde and alternative rock, playing both with composer Glenn Branca (Hamilton is one of 10 electric guitarists on the 1989 recording of Branca’s Symphony No. 6) and the group Band of Susans.

In early ’89 he formed Helmet, with a debut album, “Strap It On,” released in 1990 by the independent Amphetamine Reptile label.

By spring of ‘91, the band was being courted by several major record companies, and signed to the new Interscope label at about the same time that Nirvana showed the world how commercially huge this type of music could be.

A new album, “In the Meantime,” was released last month, and the band is just starting a U.S. concert tour, with an Aug. 5 date scheduled at the Whisky.

But while the timing obviously brought Helmet added recognition, it also has brought charges that the band opportunistically benefited from a hot trend, especially given Hamilton’s jazz background.

“I love this music, though I’m sure there are people who perceive us as just dilettantes,” he said. “It’s not like we’re a pathetic fashion band that was in the right place at the right time. But things worked out very favorably for us.”