Deftones - Crossover into white noise

Contamination, crossover, the fusion of opposite genres into a new hybrid plural: improbable neologisms that have, over time, been coined to classify the music of Deftones, a band respected as a reference point for a scene they probably never really belonged to, except at the very start.

If there's one label that has caused confusion – and by now often disgust – between critics and rock fans alike, it's certainly the crudely termed nu-metal, which is really just a generic catch-all for the combination of rap and funk with the sheer force of metal that, from Fishbone through to the Faith No More of “Angel Dust”, if not even the Primus of “Pork Soda”, influenced a series of bands who in turn became hugely influential, such as Rage Against The Machine, Korn and, indeed, Deftones – all of them skilled, in their own different ways and to different degrees, at pushing to the extreme what the aforementioned artists had already sown in the Californian underground. Looking closer, the same could be said of Black Flag, as well as, in a different way, Jane's Addiction a few years later, who had worked cunningly by crossing punk with the hard-rock vein of their compositions, blending different experiences into a sort of primordial crossover.

The retrospective journey taken so far shows how a label applied to a broad and not easily definable genre can prove even more misleading and spark even more misunderstanding than already happened with the coining of the term grunge, under which sit bands as wildly different from one another as Mudhoney and Alice In Chains, who, all things considered, had nothing in common but their city of origin. The comparison with grunge will nonetheless prove useful in showing how, from different circumstances and standpoints, ambiguous situations can ferment and justify the disgust mentioned above.

And it's into this chaos of definitions that Deftones from Sacramento step onto the scene, a multi-ethnic combo that grew up as the prodigy band of a perfectly ordinary American high school. Very young at the time, they set out on their musical path playing everything they loved, without worrying too much about crafting a sound of their own, let alone a specific direction to follow.

The singer and leader of the band is Camillo Wong Moreno, nicknamed Chino by his own mother because of the physical features that, during his childhood, made him look like the perfect Chinese kid. Chino's first calling toward music came at age 15, when he saw Robert Smith's Cure play a concert in his hometown. He thus became, somewhat late given he was too young at the time the movement first exploded, an avid fan of the new wave phenomenon, which would later go on to influence his band's music too. While Moreno spent his teenage years falling asleep to Joy Division, Depeche Mode, or even Duran Duran, the other guys in the band grew up on the metallic riffs of Iron Maiden and Metallica – in other words, the most representative names of a genre that saw its first real explosion in the Eighties. Alongside their earliest shows, Deftones began paying attention to the calls coming from the Los Angeles and San Francisco alternative-rock scenes. Above all, it would be Faith No More that provided the band's great and never-hidden source of inspiration, though they would steer the funk/metal crossover of Mike Patton's band in a wholly different direction, adding to the mix a number of influences entirely foreign to the schizophrenic combinations of the San Francisco group.

We're on the eve of grunge's death and at the peak moment of attention for crossover, when the self-titled debut album by Jonathan Davis's Korn, produced by guru Ross Robinson, hits record store shelves, radically taking the rap/heavy metal lesson proposed by the aforementioned names to its most extreme conclusion – and in part robbing Deftones' first compositions of some of their surprise factor, just as the band readies itself to debut with what will become the songs of Adrenaline. In truth, Moreno and company come to realize they're not the only ones to have developed a particular sound starting from the same formula, and the good company actually helps them quickly land a record deal with Maverick – a label owned by none other than Madonna – bolstered also by the strong audience response that greets their earliest shows with real interest.

Maverick puts producer Terry Date at the band's disposal, a figure well known in the industry for albums such as Pantera's “Vulgar Display Of Power”, as well as Soundgarden's “Badmotorfinger”, and recording begins on an album completed in short order and at minimal studio expense at Bad Animals studio in Seattle.

Adrenaline quietly arrives in stores in September 1995, and just as quietly stays there for a long time. Only an extensive tour, and the subsequent success of the following album, would start stirring up interest in a debut that otherwise goes unnoticed, despite the emotional charge of several songs destined to become true live staples for the band. For the record, to this day Adrenaline remains Deftones' second best-selling album in the United States. A European breakthrough was unthinkable at the time – even Faith No More and Red Hot Chili Peppers were still struggling to crack the overseas charts – and while Adrenaline might well have won over American audiences, it never got the backing of the right media channels. The album is a genuine frontal assault, and it already contains, in embryonic form, all the band's hallmarks: the odd time signatures and sophisticated rhythms of drummer Abe Cunningham, the angry, aggressive guitar riffs of Stephen Carpenter, the mighty but less showy bass of Chi Cheng compared to that of every other crossover band of the period, and the curious singing style of Chino Moreno, who, rather than giving himself over to syncopated rap-style tongue-twisters, mostly opts for a sighing, reflective vocal delivery, often filtered, which erupts into cries of repressed rage ready to explode without ever coming across as trite or maudlin. The album features ten tracks – plus one hidden track produced by none other than Ross Robinson – ranging from the sad, desolate crescendo of “Bored”, to the irregular cadence of “Minus Blindfold”, to the perfect hardcore/metal marriage of “Nosebleed”, all the way to the hilarious, irresistible march of “7 Words”, probably still the band's signature song to this day, and one of the foundational tracks of an entire movement. Once you reach the chorus, it's not hard to see why MTV chose not to air its video.

Two years have passed, mostly spent on tour (including as support for Korn), by the time the band's new album, Around The Fur, is ready, which this time manages, with some effort, to reach number twenty-seven on the Billboard chart. Korn have by then reached a level of popularity unimaginable at their debut, Faith No More adapt to the trend by releasing their heaviest album yet with “King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime”, and Sepultura, having reached the peak of their success with “Roots” (which also features Mike Patton and Jonathan Davis), break up.

The new record is again produced by Terry Date, and again recorded in Seattle, but this time at Studio Litho, home base of Pearl Jam, who alternate studio time with Deftones while recording what will become “Yield”. Around The Fur is an album that leaves no one indifferent, starting with its front cover, depicting a young, smiling girl in a bikini. An image bordering on the vulgar and seemingly senseless, one that offends more than a few prudish sensibilities.

Max Cavalera of Sepultura guests on Deftones' desperate “Headup”, which goes “I never said or got to say bye… …Soul fly high, fly free”, lines from which the name Soulfly would be born, a band still active to this day. But the essence of Around The Fur lies above all in the alternation between desolate, static atmospheres and the sonic aggressiveness of the typically metal riffs that run riot throughout the album, still traceable back to the debut record. “My Own Summer”, a track also remixed by Nine Inch Nails, becomes the theme tune for the famous TV show “The Osbournes”, whose creators – Ozzy's wife having been a hugely successful manager for many years – took Chino Moreno's band under their wing, placing them on the Ozzfest bill, a crossroads and launching pad for many bands in the hard and heavy field. The other most representative track of the whole bunch is undoubtedly “Be Quiet And Drive”, another of their artistic high points: a post-metal ride through the theme of the protagonist's alienation, which stands as the best composition on an album where, among others, the unease of the title track and “Mascara” – the first typically darkwave signal, an influence later destined to reshape the band's sound – also stand out.

Deftones then join the caravan of Family Values, a sort of substitute for Lollapalooza devised by Perry Farrell, alongside the mediocre bands born to follow in the originals' footsteps, the very young Incubus, and Korn themselves. In order to claw back credibility with those who, when it comes down to it, had actually invented a sound that spawned a whole school of followers, many of the new crossover bands (from here on referred to as nu-metal) add a new, controversial figure to their ranks: the deejay. As a result, musicians often incapable of replicating the feats of their adoptive forefathers manage, by another route, to steer themselves back toward a sound otherwise distant and unreachable, enriching it in fact with a hip-hop component that also won them success among new generations of teenagers. We're also approaching the decline of the genre's masters, who will give way to the new hybrids heavily pushed by American media and radio. Returning, then, to the initial comparison with the Seattle grunge movement, we can't help but notice some clear parallels with what crossover/nu-metal became in the second half of the Nineties. Indeed, just as the success of “Nevermind” caused kids in flannel shirts and Dr. Martens boots to bloom in every corner of the world, Seattle included (Candlebox, Silverchair, Bush, and later Nickelback and Puddle Of Mudd, to name just a few representative examples), in the other scene we're discussing here, many – too many – achieved success on the back of other people's ideas, unfairly disrespecting those who had actually created something new.

Against this backdrop, let's not lose sight of Deftones' own trajectory: on the eve of recording their third studio album, the band announced the expansion to a five-man line-up, bringing DJ Frank Delgado, already a longtime collaborator, on board as a full member. The news initially sounds like a pathetic chase after the latest trend: Deftones' music had never needed a deejay before. The new album, however, would reveal Delgado to be less a scratch-wielding showman than a skilled sound manipulator, sampling instruments in a way that captured sonorities that had been embedded in Deftones since their earliest days, rooted in their prior influences.

White Pony (2000) is Deftones' masterpiece, and it lifts the band head and shoulders above the vulgar mass mentioned earlier. An ambitious work that succeeds in every detail, it initially finds success - propelled by the video for "Change (In The House Of Flies)" - not only in the United States, where it debuts straight at number three, but also in the old Europe that had until then remained indifferently on the sidelines. The album is rich in catchier sounds and dark atmospheres, frozen within ethereal, dreamlike melodies mixed with powerful bursts of rage, as in the schizophrenic "Elite", which would go on to win a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. The songs' themes often revolve around adolescent memories, filtered through a spirit not far from the emo genre, of which Chino Moreno openly declares himself a fan. "Digital Bath" reaches a maturity unthinkable for a genre that just a few years earlier had been strictly funk/metal, while "Rx Queen", whose melody was co-written by Chino with Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots - who was meant to duet on it - once again reflects structures not far removed from the Cure, a band ours seem to be aspiring to. The duet with Maynard James Keenan, voice of Tool and A Perfect Circle, does not disappoint, on the splendid "Passenger", where Moreno and Keenan - who also wrote the song's lyrics - tackle a track that seems to carry the same socio-musical weight that "Hunger Strike" by Temple Of The Dog had carried almost ten years earlier. It's truly pointless to go on reviewing every single track on this album, since they are all admirable and accomplished.

Deftones' tour also passed through Italy on two occasions: memorable was their performance at the Indipendent Days Festival in Bologna, where the band, also filmed by Videomusic's cameras, left the stage to the crowd's ovation - an ovation that turned into boos and a general hail of thrown objects aimed at the act that followed them on stage, whom we elegantly choose not to mention.

However, the critical and commercial success of White Pony only partially won over the States, which were more focused on the efforts of Creed and Limp Bizkit.

Exactly three years later, and after a largely forgettable EP, came the long-awaited new Deftones album, produced for the fourth consecutive time by Terry Date, recorded and repeatedly delayed due to problems within the band members' families. Initially titled "Lovers", then released with no title at all, the 2003 self-titled album Deftones seems determined to show the hordes of teenagers who had found their idols in Linkin Park what it really means to be heavy and to own (like the self-proclaimed "untouchables" Korn) a genre. Paradoxically, though, the record comes across as weak and stubborn, precisely because, set against White Pony, the new songs seem to have been dragged reluctantly out of the mind of a band that had already found its best aesthetic form elsewhere.

Deftones does have its share of notable moments, such as the single "Minerva", a variant of the perfect example of a new-era Deftones song, "Hexagram", whose hardcore power is second only to the aforementioned "Elite", "Deathblow", which instead revisits the band's darkwave vein, and the surprising "Anniversary Of An Uninteresting Event", a gentle ambient-rock track that conjures up atmospheres utterly unthinkable within the devastating context of the record. The album debuts at number two on the Billboard chart, but quickly tumbles, ending up as something of a commercial misstep as well. After a grueling American and European tour (the latter, which wouldn't include Italy, with A Perfect Circle as support), the band found time to take part in MTV's tribute night to the Cure, where Deftones deliver a dignified rendition of "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", applauded by Smith, Gallup and the rest of the band.

After countless delays due to the lack of a record label, the Team Sleep side-project may soon finally see the light of day, with Chino Moreno, joined by a new set of trusted collaborators, exploring ambient and trip-hop sounds without giving up a moderate use of guitar. The direction taken might not stray too far from tracks like "Teenager" or "Lucky You" by the main band. The album, whose demos have been happily circulating online for at least two years, is expected to feature the ever-present Mike Patton and - rumor has it - even Davis of Korn.

After another three-year hiatus comes Saturday Night Wrist (2006). From the very start it sounds like a rehash of Deftones, only subjected to an even more decisive reactionary clampdown. "Rapture", one of the standout tracks, is a death-metal riff with a basic emo evolution and filtered vocals (part Rage Against The Machine-style rap, part obsessive thrash), scratch dissonances, brutal drumming and very dark guitars. "Mein" pairs watered-down, late-Soundgarden-style distortion with a driving rhythm and an incisive chorus, kicked off by an acrobatic break, while also featuring a kind of drone-ambient texture in the background. "Kimdracula" further strips down the riff's originality, and "Rats! Rats! Rats!" raises the stakes in terms of speed and fury, alternating electro passages with steamroller power-chord patterns. In any case, it's left to the timbral experiments (also a blend of electronics and guitar not unlike certain Limp Bizkit moments) of the long instrumental intro to "U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, A, B, Select, Start" to pull the album's interest back up.

While there's nothing to object to in the opening of "Hole In The Earth", almost a manifesto of this new direction (and perhaps their own take on the pop ballad), the pompous slow tempos of "Cherry Waves" and "Beware" (chorus explosions galore), the tedious glam-industrial number "Pink Cellphone", the lifeless neo-prog melody of "Xerces", the reheated crossover leftovers of "Combat" and the whiny fuzz sobs of closing track "Riviere" make you want to send the whole thing back.

A shapeless production tour de force from which, in truth, everything and nothing is salvaged, raising the stakes of ambition (even lending a semblance of usefulness to the otherwise futile side-project Team Sleep), consolidating the band's skill, sacrificing conciseness, and shrugging off its own high predictability. The unstable balance between calculated, video-friendly melodic tricks and screamo edges doesn't always manage to bear the weight of its own stereotypes. Still, there's fury and urgency here again (even if it's not entirely clear what's driving it).

Sixth album from the standard-bearers of nu-metal, Diamond Eyes is a work with a troubled history. The record was originally due out in 2009 under the title "Eros". But the serious car accident that left bassist Chi Cheng gravely injured pushed the band to scrap its release and record new material with Sergio Vega (ex-Quicksand). Singer Chino Moreno explained that "Eros" no longer represented the band's true essence.

The album marks the band's move from Maverick, the label that launched the Sacramento five-piece with the seminal "Adrenaline", to Velvet Hammer. The opening (the title track) isn't the most thrilling, but the band quickly bounces back with the excellent "Royal", classic Deftones style with a hugely powerful finale. The third track, "Cmnd Ctrl", starts out aggressive right away, before moving into a splash of electronics - the only one on the album, unlike on previous records. Next comes "You've Seen The Butcher", a fine atmospheric piece, followed by "Beauty School", a track similar in structure to the previous one but less convincing. The following "Prince" alternates soft passages with harder ones, with Chino screaming at the top of his lungs in the finale. "Rocket Skates", the first single, is a track with neither particular merit nor particular flaws, followed by the decent ballad "Sextape". The ninth track, "Risk", also moves at a fairly slow pace, as does the following "976 Evil". Both tracks pass by without leaving much of a mark. Closing the record is the menacing-in-title-only "This Place Is Death".

The overall impression is that Diamond Eyes is the least inspired work of Deftones' career, perhaps partly due to its troubled gestation.

Having replaced bassist Chi Cheng with Sergio Vega, borrowed from post-hardcore outfit Quicksand, Deftones returned in 2012 with Koi No Yokan, an album that preserves all the classic hallmarks of their sound while amplifying them into new contexts that hint at fresh margins of novelty and growth.

The blend on a good chunk of the songs sits squarely within Deftones tradition, as shown by the opener "Swerve City", with its unbeatable chorus, or by "Leathers" and "Polterheist", a precious one-two of crossover songwriting that few bands still know how to pull off today.

However, when listened to without the mental baggage imposed by the monstrous predecessors released in the five-year span between 1995 and 2000, one can make out alternative-rock iridescence ("Tempest"), flashes of shoegazing ("Rosemary", perhaps the best of the eleven tracks on offer), "post"-rock touches and furious bursts somewhere between Meshuggah and Glassjaw ("Gauze") that enrich the record's tonal palette. Finally, Chico Moreno's vocal theatrics also emerge forcefully here and there, drawing vital sap now from his "friends" - be it Mike Patton, Maynard James Keenan or Jared Leto - now from his various side projects (Team Sleep or Crosses, for instance on "Entombed"), now from his longtime "rival" Jonathan Davis, in moments where he isn't trying to elevate himself into a guru of youthful discontent for its own sake, but instead strives to interpret it through stories about life, suffering and alienation.

The Deftones' rebirth could well begin precisely from these grooves.

Before moving on to the latest album, titled Gore, we need to go back to 2008, when bassist Chi Cheng was the victim of a car accident that left him in a coma. As already mentioned, the band put on hold the album it was working on at the time, "Eros", intending to release it once Chi Cheng was able to walk again so they could perform it together on a new tour - but sadly that hope was shattered in 2013 with his death. This fact is reflected both in the sound, darker and more conflicted, and in the songwriting, which tries at once to keep ties with the band's own identity and to move beyond it to pursue an independent path. As if to say that the past isn't forgotten and shouldn't be forgotten, but that one must lift one's head and look ahead.

The album is less polished and cohesive than its predecessor; if anything, it has more of a jam session feel and is in some ways more spontaneous, alternating between different moods, but generally continuing to open up to shoegaze influences, keeping the sound full-bodied, somewhere between dreamy atmospheres and a newly attained artistic self-awareness.

The crux of it all is the balance between sonic dynamism and atmosphere, at which Deftones are by now masters. At the same time, the band now seems to prefer sticking to safer routes, no longer daring as they once did, drawing closer to the emotional experimentalism of albums like Saturday Night Wrist or their masterpiece White Pony, and the ideas that characterize the album aren't really anything new, being rather the completion of a trend already underway.

In conclusion, a professionally crafted album that is at its best when focused on melody and atmosphere, while appearing less inspired in its more distorted moments. A work that, when needed, requires a few extra listens to be absorbed by those expecting bigger changes.

Album number nine, which could potentially have arrived as early as 2019 but only reached our ears toward the end of 2020, is titled Ohms. A long-awaited return, produced moreover by Terry Date himself, who hadn't been behind the mixing desk for the band since the never-released album "Eros" (2008). The striking cover art, by Frank Maddocks, continues instead a collaboration now twenty years old, since he's also responsible for the iconic artwork of White Pony (2000) and every subsequent album. All elements of continuity, not mere trivia, that let us frame the record even before hitting that fateful play button. The matter isn't quite so straightforward, though, given that there have been tragic events as well as some attempts to shift the sound over the course of the band's long career. This time, however, Deftones continue the settling-in already glimpsed on Gore, trying to refine their peculiar blend of violent and melancholy, distorted and melodic, muscular and intimate. With the more explosive tendencies now trimmed away - the ones that pushed the intensity toward screaming and noise, heard here mostly on "This Link Is Dead" - the Americans don't do much to surprise, but rather try to systematize their emotional and stylistic range in a mature, coherent way. They do so across 10 tracks in 46 minutes, cruising along without any major jolts. Familiar in its arrangements and recognizable in style, with all the hallmarks of a long and fruitful career, Ohms reminds us that Deftones are still in good shape, even if they won't be driving any new musical innovation. It's a reassuring listen, free of forgettable tracks, and yet nothing on offer here seems capable of making any real difference, either to their own career or, even less so, to music in general. The enthusiasm of international critics, certified by a Metascore of 88/100, is at least partly justified by the fact that, among their generation, they're among those who've aged decidedly the best.

Ever since Chino Moreno and his cohorts, back in 2000, immersed themselves in what - in honor of one of the most iconic tracks from their masterpiece (White Pony) - we might call a "digital bath", everything changed for them. They would never again be just a nu metal band, having in fact already distanced themselves in terms of taste from that (at the time) much-maligned genre. And their sound would live through a perpetual evolutionary urgency.

Twenty-five years and six albums later, Deftones are still like this, incapable of aging, curious, faithful to their origins, yet determined to channel their old fury into new solutions. The torrential opening of "My Mind Is A Mountain" promises tons of granite, groove and guitar sledgehammers, but the digital backdrops sketched behind Chino's voice in the more relaxed moments steer the album toward a cyber-punk landscape painting - the one at the close of "Souvenir" being the most entrancing.

The form of the Sacramento singer (now fifty-two) is enviable: he leaps from rapping to falsetto amid the low-tuned bombs of "Locked Club", and stretches out like elastic on "Ecdysis". On the violent "Cut Hands" he even indulges in the whim of growling like he did back in the "Adrenaline" days.

So there's plenty here to mosh and get worked up to, yet Private Music is above all a pained album, laden with reflections and contradictions that spring from the difficult navigation of contradictory, deceptive times. Take "Infinite Source", a track with the stature of an (instant) alternative rock classic, built on the biting contrast between the lively guitar work of the verses and the inextinguishable melancholy of the chorus; or the romanticism of "I Think About You All The Time", a ballad about love woven together from dream-pop stillness, alternative metal jolts and seafaring metaphors.

Private Music is the album of a band that (unlike several of their peers in the genre) isn't afraid to change, or even to age. A band that never barricades itself inside its own comfort zone and doesn't fear the backlash of some more reactionary fans - whom they'd perhaps rather lose. And that's exactly why, nearly forty years after their founding, they're still there, among the greats, the ones who never fade. And here we are, lining up to buy this album with the white snake on its fluorescent green cover, admittedly a bit kitsch. Just like twenty-five or twenty-eight years ago - in case you started out with their first true masterpiece, Around The Fur.

Contributions by Michele Saran ("Saturday Night Wrist"), Michele Lo Presti ("Diamond Eyes"), Giorgio Moltisanti ("Koi No Yokan"), Alessandro Mattedi ("Gore"), Antonio Silvestri ("Ohms"), Michele Corrado ("Private Music")

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google