Deftones |
|||||
|
DEFTONES Private Music( Reprise)
Tossed into the vague marketing bin of“ nu-metal” when they hit the scene in the latter half of the 1990s, the Sacramento-based Deftones never felt comfortable with that association. Sure, they had down-tuned distorted guitars and looked like they hung out at skate parks, but underneath all that was a depth and complexity that the likes of Korn, Limp Bizkit, and the rest of their Ozzfest brethren never approached. Singer Chino Moreno would pepper his aggression with moments of languid beauty, employing his delicate tenor when needed. The band originally signed to Madonna’ s boutique label, Maverick, and released two buzz-worthy albums that garnered minimal radio play and a late-night MTV rotation. They would finally take a major step forward with the year 2000’ s multi-faceted White Pony album, which allowed the band to shed their nu-metal skin for a sophisticated rock masterpiece marked by the legitimate radio hit“ Change( In The House Of Flies.” The next twenty years found the band riding intense highs and lows, culminating
|
in a 2008 car accident, which left bassist Chi Cheng severely injured before passing away a short time later. What followed was a series of albums that continued to build their die-hard fanbase. This new album, Private Music, absolutely leaps out of the speakers, produced with care by Nick Raskulinecz, who has been working with the group on and off since the early 2000s. His technique offers an interesting blend of digital detail and analog warmth, giving Private Music a quality lacking in most current hard rock bands. The woozy tech-metal of“ Milk Of The Madonna” explodes into a dream-pop chorus, making it perfect fodder for a summer blockbuster movie soundtrack.“ Infinite Source” bludgeons the listener with a riff of guitar harmonics so deeply ingrained in this band’ s DNA that it could have appeared on their 1995 debut album, Adrenaline; however, the production is so crystalline that it couldn’ t have been made at any time other than the present. First single“ My Mind Is A Mountain” showcases drummer Abe Cunningham’ s canny ability to go from allout assault to a powerful double time-beat, providing the perfect bed for Stephen |
Carpenter’ s acerbic guitar and Chino’ s intoxicating howl. This band has remained remarkably consistent over the past three decades, and its stability is one of its key strengths. Chino Moreno appears to save his more experimental side for side projects like Crosses and Team Sleep, keeping Deftones an |
immovable force in the hard rock landscape. While millennials begin to look back on numetal with sepia-toned nostalgia, it’ s exhilarating to see one of the genre’ s founding fathers sounding so modern and powerful.
– Andy Derer 8
Continued on page 10
|