Deftones turn up same sound
Almost seven years after nu-metal was officially killed by Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavoured Water, the Deftones are still associated with bands like Korn, Slipknot, and Disturbed.
In truth they've been in a class of their own since the release of 2000's White Pony. If you aren't familiar with their sound, it's a crush of apocalyptic, cathartic guitar, rap metal drumming, and surprisingly melodic vocal passages. TIME magazine has described Chino Moreno's lyrics as “furiously intelligent” and their music generally projects emotional complexity and fragility, something completely absent in their genre counterparts.
Saturday Night Wrist is the first album out since Moreno's side project Team Sleep, essentially a much softer Deftones, got off the ground in 2005. It hasn't seemed to drain the album of the down-tempo tracks that pepper previous releases, but most of the record has a more complex-aggressive sound than ever, thanks to teaming up with Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin.
Almost all of the songs present on this disc live up to the Deftones' high standard of quality. The single “Hole in the Earth” is a big departure from their usual sound that should attract more fans, and the roller-coaster ride of “Mein” (featuring System of a Down's Serj Tankian) will get your blood pumping. “Pink Cellphone” is a disturbing electronic trip through the mind of a teenage girl that blows me away every time I hear the opening synths.
Fans of the band, however, may be dismayed by the re-use of some old guitar ideas from their prior albums. It's disappointingly easy to draw parallels between half of the songs on this CD and their breakout hits from earlier in their career, like “Digital Bath”, “Elite” and “Teenager”. There are worse things to imitate, and overall this release is more solid than their 2003 self-titled record, but it is not a return to perfection.
