Deftones came from Sacramento (California) to bring a new gospel
of angry heavy metal to the masses of alienated kids.
Adrenaline (Maverick, 1995) wears its Black Sabbath and
Metallica influences (Bored) but also vents visceral anger in
Engine No 9 (their 1984 debut single) and delves into
the harrowing psychodramas of Fist and Birthmark.
While mostly the album remains
in the shadow of Korn and Nirvana (One Weak, 7 Words), the band
shows a sharper edge and a more mature take on the issues.
Around The Fur (Maverick, 1997)
stretches the range of their songwriting and performance with songs like
My Own Summer, Rickets and
Be Quiet and Drive that mold anger into real music.
The result is not too different from what
Smashing Pumpkins have been doing, although the
Deftones sound rawer and unpolished.
Moreno is the real reason to listen to the album: his vocal style has become
more and more acrobatic and versatile (Lhabia).
Adrenaline and Around The Fur
were instant hits for a generation that consumes and burns melodic grunge
like cocacola, but hardly left a mark on the genre.
With White Pony (Maverick, 2000) Deftones
achieved a sound that is both classical and subversive.
Drummer Abe Cunningham and bassist Chi Cheng make up a forceful and
subtle rhythm section. Guitarist Stephen Carpenter and dj Frank Delgado
add color to vocalist Chino Moreno's passionate outbursts.
The sinister, sick, deformed howl of Felticeira,
mixed with waves of guitar distortions,
the titanic cry of Passenger, immersed in the sound of
bomber-like guitars,
not to mention psychodramas like Rx Queen and especially Change,
carefully balance dynamics and violence, hypnotic beats and atmospheric guitars,
neurotic noises and mellow vocals.
The grindcore spasm of Elite and the punk-rock vehemence of
Street Carp and the crashing grunge of Korea attest the underlying
desperation.
The closing Pink Maggit sounds like a kid alone in his bedroom,
daydreaming and sobbing in the dark.
The catchy brutality of the music is matched by
profound and erudite lyrics that deal with alienation and the meaning of life.
Where Korn and Tool are fundamentally teenager music, Deftones are adult
philosophers.
By those standards, the quiet, eerie Digital Bath, sung like in a dream,
is a ballad, the intensely emotional Back To School is a church hymn,
and the whispered, relaxed, futuristic lullaby
Teenager is the
track of another band, perhaps a prelude to Moreno's solo future.
Moreno's side project was called Team Sleep,
a trio of two guitars and a turntable,
and initially played guitar-based ambient music.
Carpenter's side-project was called Kush and played just the opposite: super-heavy
funk-industrial-metal. It includes Fear Factory's rhythm section and a rapper.
On Deftones (Maverick, 2003)
the Deftones can still balance on a thin wire between heavy-metal machoism
(When Girls)
and folkish tenderness (Battle Axe), but also veer towards
poppish triviality (Bloody Cape).
Increased melodic prowess (Minerva and Lucky You) and
increased electronic and digital sophistication by Delgado transform teenage
angst into adult philosophizing (Death Blow).
Team Sleep, now a supergroup of sorts fronted by the Deftones' vocalist Chino Moreno with Hella's Zach Hill on drums and Tom Wilkinson on guitar, plus several guests, applied post-rock to trip-hop Team Sleep (2005)
The ostensible seriousness of
Saturday Night Wrist (Maverick, 2006) keeps it from being classified as
self-parody, although most of its songs are exactly what self-parody means.
Moreno dominates the proceedings more than ever. One can claim that the music
is basically centered upon his introspective malaise. Occasionally this yields
gripping melodrama (Kimdracula), but too often it sounds like
Morrissey fronting the wrong band.
There are mainly two songs that wake up the listener: the frenzied
Rats and the
porn-fantasy over electronic beats of Pink Cellphone, although both
can be interpreted as desperate acts by a group that has lost its inspiration.
Just like its predecessor, Diamond Eyes (Reprise, 2010), without bassist Cheng, was
painstakingly constructed to assemble the Deftones' best tricks, but, unlike
that album, it avoided the descent into unfamiliar experimental waters.
Alas, the songs are largely faceless, and the album flows like the soundtrack
to a documentary of nu-metal's latter days.
Koi No Yokan (2012)
recaptured some of the magic of White Pony with stormy songs like
Leathers and Graphic Nature,
while finally finding a viable format for their softer side in the noisy but
dreamy Rosemary and Tempest.
Deftone's bassist Chi Cheng died in 2013, who had been in a coma since 2008.
Gore (2016) contains the crushing Doomed User and the
power-ballad Phantom Bride, but mostly it signals a complete
betrayal of their nu-metal and a turn towards a mainstream pop-metal sound.
Frank Delgado's synths are more prominent on Ohms (2020), but the
album is actually more energetic and visceral than most of its predecessors
(Genesis, Error, This Link is Dead).
