Deftones

One Liner: Mid-90's hard rockers with a few great tunes and then some Incubus and screaming sludge.
Wikipedia Genre: Alternative metal,  experimental rock, art metal, post-metal, nu metal (early).  I like that - a differentiation to show that they were nu metal in the early days before shifting.  Good work Wikipedia peoples.
Home: Sacramento, California

Poster Position: 3
Day: Saturday at 6:30
Weekend One Only.

Thoughts:  I very much enjoyed a few of their songs back in the post-college days.  I have a distinct memory of downloading a few tracks from the early Napster hellscape, burning them to a disc, and jamming them in my truck while commuting from Dallas to Lewisville each day (along with System of a Down, Rage, Disturbed, Limp Bizkit, etc.  Such great taste in tunes).  
Saying that this sounds like Tool isn't quite right (this is more punkish), but neither is the comparison to Rage Against the Machine (more arty than those guys), but its somewhere in that same wheelhouse of hard rock bordering on metal that depends on syncopated rhythms and vocals that vacillate between a quiet menace and a loud bellow.  Definitely harder than regular alternative rock, but most of their hits don't go quite hard enough for me to call them metal.  I'm not a fan of this entire catalog, but some bits are very good.

The only album I ever really knew was White Pony, which came out in 2000, but they have a surprisingly large number of other albums.  A 1995 debut called Adrenaline, 1997's Around the Fur, White Pony, and then more albums in 2003, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016.  I'll give you the two hits from White Pony before we dive into the newer stuff.  "Passenger" is my favorite one, although it is only their third most listened to track - this one sounds very much like Tool (because lead singer Maynard James Keenan does the vocals, but also because of the Tool-esque metered jams).

Still dig that track.  19.2 million streams (up over a million since I started this review, which was right after the bands were announced, originally at 18.1 million streams, which is interesting.  Is it because of being announced for ACL?  Why would they get a 5% bump in listens in one month 18 years after this album came out?).  Very good stuff.  

Interestingly, the band won a Grammy at the 2001 awards show, but not for that track or for their most popular track, but for a different one called "Elite."  "Elite" is literally one of the least-listened to songs on the album, and yet it won the band a metal Grammy award.  Weird stuff.  The Grammys are wack.  We'll skip that one that the dork judges liked so much (because it isn't great, shitty vocals over a generic driving fuzz track) and give you the band's most popular track (by quite a bit at 50.5 million streams, edit - up to 53.4 million since last month).  This is "Change (In the House of Flies)."

Another good one.  That track still gets play on alternative rock radio even today.  

Before that White Pony album, their earlier two albums were a pretty similar sound, the comparison to Tool is even stronger to me, although nothing on the first one is that memorable.  "Bored" is the most listened to, and the album opener, and it sounds kind of like Nirvana trying to play Tool.  The second album, 1997's Around the Fur, has a few tunes I recall from college days (as well as the cover, which features a very high angle photo of a young lady in a bra or bikini top.  The top track from that album, their second most listened to track overall, is "My Own Summer (Shove It)," which has 33.4 million streams and that same whispered then yelled vocal style over an aggressively sour guitar riff.

Meh.  I guess I like the music groove, but the screaming portion of the lyrics I can do without.

And honestly, that is what holds me back from fully embracing this band.  I've been running through the albums after White Pony, and they have some really good songs that make me think I need to add this band into my normal rotation, but then they'll have one that is all dissonance and screaming and it breaks the spell.  The 2016 album (Gore) has one song with almost 10 million streams, but it is the album opener, and you know my theory about that.  One more gets over 5 million (the relatively chilled "Hearts/Wires"), but its not that special.  
Likewise, the 2012 (Koi No Yokan, which translates to Premonition of the Dark - spoooooky!) album has one song with significantly more plays than the others, and it is the album opener.  I like it, check out "Swerve City."

Oooh, that hot cowboy lady's gonna shoot that fancy car man!  Driving beat, kind of sweeping sound, makes my head bob, I like it.  And other bits of that album are great too, but then you'll get a screamer like "Poltergeist" and it snaps the mood.  Too bad, although I'm sure they have a legion of fans who live for that screamy art of the album.  I also like the long ass track "Rosemary" from this one.

If not that Koi No Yokan disc, then I think my favorite album after White Pony would be the 2006 album Saturday Night Wrist (although not a single song from that album shows up on the band's current top ten songs).  Pretty sure the lead singer from System of a Down is on "Mein," although he doesn't get credit. Yet again, the top listened to track on this album is the first one.  Maybe I should explain this theory again, in case you are new here.  When a band has a great debut album, or really any album that is very popular, but their later albums can't live up to the goodness of the old stuff, you see a lot of people hop onto their Spotify to try out their later albums, but my theory is that they try out that first song, decide it isn't as good as the classic, and move on without hearing the rest of the disc.  I think that is what you are seeing here.  The opener on this disc has over 6 million streams, then nothing else breaks 5 million and most don't break 2 million streams.  Big falloff.  Like other albums, my favorite parts of this are when they go kind of chilled, restrained, coiled.  Try this one out, "Cherry Waves."

Hard enough to rock.  Melodic enough to be pretty.  Kind of longing and sweet, while still not pandering or adding in a suite of strings.  Good tune.  But then "Rats!Rats!Rats!" is awful.  Like a bad Refused B-Side, and just full of jarring transitions from melodic to screaming.  Hate it.  And the ending of "Pink Cellphone" is foul, like one of those stupid, juvenile outros that Limp Bizkit used to do.

I'm also entertained by the 2011 album Covers, which is an album of (wait for it!) cover songs.  I wouldn't say that Covers is necessarily great, but it is entertaining to hear them tackle such diverse stuff as The Cars, The Smiths, Skynyrd, or Sade.  I don't recognize a lot of these other tunes, they are going deep into the musical rabbit hole.  I gotta say I was excited about "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," but the original is infinitely better, the nuance and simplicity of the original music matches the song too well. But I do enjoy "Simple Man," because that song rules.  They also have a B-Sides album, which includes a cover of Helmet's "Sinatra," which definitely rules (although it doesn't stray very far at all from the original).

So, a final ruling.  I guess I'd go see them play.  Their good outweighs the bad, and I would expect that they will be trying to bring their good out instead of trying to go full screamo for a crowd of people who are definitely not their core fans.