Review Summary: Meandering and shockingly one-note, "Gore" puts a disheartening end to Deftones' recent hot streak.
The creative rebirth Deftones has undergone during this decade has been nothing short of astounding. After following-up their widely-lauded 2000 album White Pony with a pair of meandering, uninspired records (2003's Deftones and 2006's Saturday Night Wrist), Deftones regained their focus with 2010's sufficiently crushing yet strikingly beautiful Diamond Eyes and haven't looked back since. The cause for their resurgence is up for debate (popular theories include vocalist Chino Moreno finally kicking the drug habit that plagued him for nearly a decade and obtaining a grief-inspired creative reawakening from the November 2008 car crash that put their founding bassist Chi Cheng in a coma and eventually took his life in April 2013), but it's undeniable that the two records they've put out in the 2010's (Diamond Eyes and 2012's Koi No Yokan) have been amongst the most polished and well-received releases of their lengthy career. Deftones recent run of brilliance has come to an end with the incredibly frustrating Gore, a record that is all but guaranteed to create a massive divide within the band's fanbase.
The primary reason Deftones has become one of the most well-respected metal acts of the past two decades is their deep dedication to having a sound that frequently veers between being ridiculously heavy and strikingly serene. On Gore, that balance is nowhere to be found. About 75% of the album consists of plodding slow songs with instrumentation that's so lifeless and repetitive that you often forget that it's even there. The Deftones may have released an abundance of dazzling melodic songs in the past, but the mellow material here is sorely lacking the emotional power and stunning atmosphere that has defined their most memorable melodic tracks ("Knife Prty", "Digital Bath", "Sextape") in the past. Tracks such as "Acid Hologram", "Hearts/Wires" and "(L)MIRL" drone along with none of the passion or gorgeous soundscapes listeners have come to expect from them over the years.
I fully expected this record's much more deliberate, laid-back material to grow on me like the similarly melodic Koi No Yokan did back in 2012, but Gore has actually managed to become more tedious to sit through upon subsequent listens. It's honestly kind of astonishing that a band whose reputation has largely been built upon their ability to craft songs with overwhelming emotion and stirring melodies has managed to a make record that has both of those things in such short supply.
While it pains me to admit it, the heavily-scrutinized comments guitarist Stephen Carpenter made in a February interview with ultimateguitar.com about how the lack of heaviness on Gore made it difficult for him to be excited to play on the record are painfully accurate. The moments where the band allows some heaviness to enter the fold ("Doomed User", "Prayers/Triangles", the title track) are far and away the most captivating moments of the entire record. The entire mid-portion of the record where the band enters full-blown shoegaze/indie rock territory desperately needed the special spark of energy that the hard-hitting side of Deftones' sound consistently provides. When Moreno's frantic, incendiary screams and Carpenter's signature headbang-worthy chunk riffs are used so sparingly over the course of an album, it feels like the heart and soul of this band has been removed. Gore is the first time since Saturday Night Wrist where Deftones have strayed from their metal roots for a majority of the record and it shows in the album's near-constant mediocrity.
Gore will most likely appease fans of Saturday Night Wrist-era material and/or people that prefer the shoegaze-influnced side of Deftones sound, but fans of the rest of their discography are bound to be disappointed by the lack of variety and heavier elements here. This is hardly a death sentence for a band that has the level of prestige and multi-genre reach that Deftones have, it just happens to be an incredibly disappointing release for a band that had been in a seemingly unbreakable groove for the past five years. Gore is a colossal letdown and when the dust settles on 2016, it will more than likely prove to be one of the year's most disheartening disappointments.
