IN DEFENSE OF: Deftones, aka The Band That Disappeared

When you listen to an album, you know you’re not just listening to an album, right? You’re listening to an album and processing all the information you know about the people who made it; all the words written about them, all the pictures printed, whatever your friends think of them. For all that we like to claim that it’s all about the music, that’s just not how our brains are wired. When we listen to something by Radiohead, we have to decide whether or not it represents the band “disappearing up their own arses”, which for some people means any record that isn’t a mirror image of OK Computer. When we hear a Madonna track on the radio, we’re aware that something about her public persona makes us want to retch, even though we won’t say anything, because she has spies everywhere. And she’s got muscles in places we didn’t even know existed.

Of course, a band’s story always feeds into our analysis of their work and what it represents in the scheme of things. But listeners – and especially listeners who are paid to write reviews to inform the public – have to remember that the music always comes first, and focussing too much on an artist’s history or place within genres is a distraction which ultimately does the music a disservice.

It all comes down to the importance and impertinence of first impressions, and no first impression if more impertinent than the one lumbered on Deftones, a band that has its origin in the West Coast nu-metal scene but outgrew it so fast that it has become an utter irrelevance to the band’s recent and current work. Nevertheless, those skater-metal, baggy pants, nothing-interesting-to-say associations have consistently dogged the band since the mid-90s and their debut album Adrenaline, and I think it’s this misconception that has led to the band being seemingly abandoned by the wider music press, meaning that one of the metal genre’s finest (and most transcendent) groups is also one of its most ignored.

So why should you pay attention? Well, because Deftones is an all-too-rare example of a band with brains as well as the all-important pair of hairy, pendulous balls. Metal is a genre heaving with testicles, but coherent thought is too often left behind in the frenzied thrust. Over the course of five albums, Deftones have displayed an almost perfect evolutionary arc from the raw aggression of Adrenaline through to the meditative waves of distortion heard on Saturday Night Wrist, a sound that has a lot more in common with My Bloody Valentine and M83 than Metallica.

Deftones are great because within their discography, you’ll find a diversity of emotion that’s sorely lacking from the repertoires of even the mightiest metal colossi. Looking for unbridled rage? Check out the (Grammy Award winning!)crushing sonic and lyrical assault of Elite. Or, for a warm audio bath, try the meandering euphoria of Cherry Waves or the yielding Minerva. Hexagram is loud and direct, but evokes the shared joy of a roaring crowd with a shared purpose.

Special attention should also be paid to Chino Moreno’s vocals, which are miraculous in their diversity and startling in their delivery. Moreno’s throat is as much an instrument as Steph Carpenter’s guitar, servicing the drugged-out lyricism either through angelic melody or freakish caterwaul. I’d also be remiss not to praise, while I’m in full indulgent swing, the counter-intuitive genius of Abe Cunningham’s drumming, which eschews the brutal bombast of typical metal rhythm sections in favour of subtler, rattling patterns that give the band’s expansive guitar sounds room to breathe.

It was announced just at the tail end of last year that Deftones’ as-yet-untitled sixth album will be released on April 27 (at least in the States). This comes after a tumultuous couple of years for the band following a near-fatal car crash that left bassist Chi Cheng in a coma from which he has still not fully recovered, and the tossing away of virtually a whole album’s worth of material (called Eros) as it was deemed unreflective of Deftones circa 2010 (the band are still planning on releasing it at some point). The band have brought on ex-Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega as a full-time replacement for Cheng as he attempts to recover from his injuries.

So here’s to Chi Cheng’s speedy recovery and album number six; hopefully it’ll be as defiantly uncompromising as all their other releases, and hopefully someone will listen to it.