Deftones
One of popular-rock’s most influential and cutting-edge names has remained – since 1988, at their inception – the Deftones.
Sacramento, California remains their base, and a home-soil that the quintet can return to after their notorious rampaging schedule of touring and recording. Yet the band remain tireless – five friends connected mentally and musically to a near-pulverising degree; of which, there’s vocalist Chino Moreno, bassist Chi Cheng, drummer Abe Cunningham, turntable whiz-kid and keyboardist Frank Delgado, plus guitarist Stephen Carpenter.
It’s metal, but not as you know it – this time combined and interlocked with etched-in melody and aching atmospherics, immersed in Moreno’s wail that’s altogether as absorbing as it is chilling. Their debut-LP ‘Adrenaline’ set the scene pretty well, spawning MTV-favourite, ‘Bored’, and serving as the essential pre-cursor two years prior to ‘97’s ‘Around The Fur’: a record which initiated yet further alternative chart-entries – from the sprawling riffage of ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’, to the frivolous combustion of ‘Be Quiet & Drive’.
But it was 2000’s ‘White Pony’ that quite possibly could be name-checked as the ‘commercial’ breakthrough, going platinum and beyond soon after its release, and earning the band their first Grammy Award. What followed was sudden, international acclaim on a scale never previously encountered, taking the band to the likes of Japan, Australia, Europe, the States, the UK and everywhere in between during a hectic itinerary.
The work paid off (with reported global sales of output to date toppling four million units), and the band resultantly had a break. Though this was not to last long – the five-piece soon regrouped within their ‘The Spot’ rehearsal-space and studio, jamming out the blueprint to this year’s ‘Deftones’: a raucous, riotous wall-of-sound from beginning to end, and possibly their most adventurous and stunning achievement yet. Well, until their next one at least.
OFFICIAL SITE: Flash-designed, inexplicably easy-to-use and very pretty at the same time. Rock, and - indeed - roll.
THEDEFTONES.COM: Fan-run, but no less competent, informative or classy - this is a well-structured effort worthy of applause and plaudits.
DEFTONESWORLD.COM: Ditto to the above - how come these fans are so bloody organised and dedicated? Admirable fellows...