"In the Meantime"

Helmet
(Interscope/Atlantic, 1992)

As sculpturally perfect as "Iron Man" with twice the economy. Helmet cleaned up Sabbath's Mephistophelean knuckle-dragger death blooze until it gleamed with a rational, mechanical, lab-nerd precision. "Meantime" was, upon its release, the absolute heaviest thing ever, and its atomic drop-D tuning became metal's new standard (well, at least until Korn), sinking the sound of apocalypse just a little deeper into the abyss. No one who heard it ever looked back -- including Helmet, who rewrote the song over and over for two albums before calling it quits.

-- Carly Carioli