Review Summary: An underwhelming follow-up to an absolute classic.
The third Deftones album, White Pony, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest rock albums to be released yet this millennium. A masterpiece of soft and heavy, darkness and light, it was the crux upon which the band’s career soared, and stands as an immortal monument to their brilliance. But then Deftones faced a truly massive challenge- how the hell to top it. They could have gone two ways- either ape the White Pony formula for all it was worth, or cut their losses and move in a different direction. The resulting product is a confused mismatch of the two- for the self-titled Deftones is quite brilliant in places, yet in others, painfully mediocre.
Let’s start with the good points. “Hexagram” kicks the album off well, a monstrously heavy piece that takes a jackhammer to the listener’s ears. The schizophrenic vocal madness of the chorus adds to the feeling of disorientation brilliantly, while Chino’s shrieking vocal style suits the heavier backdrop perfectly. Along similar lines is “When Girls Telephone Boys”, a nauseatingly ferocious track that stands as perhaps the best heavy Deftones song of all time. The vocals on this track are almost disturbing, so frenzied and impassioned is Chino’s delivery.
There’s another side to this album as well- the more melodic, introspective, White Pony channelling side. Take the shimmering trip-hop piece “Lucky You”. Built around haunting synths and nervous scratching, with ethereal vocals floating on top, it’s one of the band’s bravest compositions, and undoubtedly one of the most exciting moments of this album. “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event” is similarly downbeat, but is instead a quite traditional, low key rock ballad, complete with toy piano and yearning lyrics about a lost love. It’s new territory for Deftones, and it’s absolutely beautiful.
Yet while there are moments where this album is gorgeous and spellbinding in its delivery (the bulldozer-heavy riffage of "Bloody Cape", the beautiful and crushing mid-tempo smash hit “Minerva”), there are also moments where it is something quite unusual for Deftones- extremely, painfully average. “Needles and Pins” is a decent enough track to follow up “Hexagram”, but decent enough stopped being good enough a long time ago. "Good Morning Beautiful" is another point of disappointment, especially coming after the otherworldly majesty of "Minerva".
Indeed, there are times on this album when the band don't really seem to know when to stop. "Battle-Axe" is a decent enough track, but is spread thin by an overlong running time, while "Deathblow" is one of the weakest songs in the Deftones canon. Comparing the achingly dull “Moana” to such brilliant Deftones album closers “Pink Maggit” and “MX” shows just how much the band’s quality control dropped after White Pony went supernova. And while "Bloody Cape" is a monstrous slice of classic Deftones, it sounds inappropriate sandwiched between the more forward-thinking “Lucky You” and “Anniversary”.
And there is the biggest problem in this album- the structuring. While on White Pony the transition between heavy and melodic tracks sounded comfortable and confident, here it is strangely awkward. Though it is a perfectly decent album, Deftones is a somewhat flawed collection that never really takes off, and marked the start of the band’s lengthy struggle to escape from the shadow of White Pony- a struggle that only ended with the release of last year’s magnificent Diamond Eyes.
