Review Summary: Extremely mediocre (I can't see why so many people overrate it) but it has a few decent moments.
Well, how should I start... You know, there are those bands who try to sound like another band. They're often considered annoying but some of them manages to make their way to the right audience and - despite the small amount of original traits - get popular. Unfortunately Deftones is too ambitious to simply copy the actual sound (KoRn's hip-hop influenced metal sound in this case), no!, they've got to get rid of the best parts (funky basslines, barking-esque vocals, etc), and as if it wasn't enough, they feel like they've got to slow down the music.
Really guys? Come on! KoRn is far from being top notch when it comes to technicality, and even if you play your KoRn-wannabe riffs in normal tempo they get boring after about 15 seconds.
It doesn't matter at all, Deftones managed to find their audience. Hipsters and elitists.
After they lost their bassist (rest in peace, Chi Cheng ... he was the only member of the band I considered talented and respected), Deftones replaced him with Sergio Vega from QUICKSAND (fun fact, they are considered POST-HARDCORE(!!!!!!), but their music sounds NOTHING like Pierce the Veil, Underoath, Emarosa, The Fall Of Troy, Dance Gavin Dance or any other post-hardcore band I ever heard of, so I just find it laughable that some people think they're actual post-hardcore)
The question is simple. Can something (which is far from great) get worse?
Yes, it can. On their next release Stephen Carpenter tried to add some MATH(!). Not advanced math (like TDEP or Botch) just random, useless, forced time signature changes (for example in the song CMND/CTRL), but they don't work at all. Sorry guys now I've got to break the flow of the review because it's tiring to talk about an album that isn't even the object of my review.
So let's jump to the point.
(surprise) Koi No Yokan is not a good album. When do the listener realize that it's not going to be a good album? Somewhere around 0:40, when Chino's very-forced-but-not-catchy-nor-funny-enough-to-be-a-guilty-pleasure chorus ("That travel through the air" really?) kicks in. Funny fact their DJ added some delay to make it less terrible and he succeed.
Anyway It would be ignorant to say "just because they couldn't write a decent opening, the entire album will be boring". But this is the truth. The second song starts with a very forced riff that tries to create an actual atmosphere but it doesn't work, surprie (!) it's followed by another riff (which makes the former sounds unique and good) and then GUESS WHAT? another very-forced-but-not-catchy-nor-funny-enough-to-be-a-guilty-pleasure chorus.
I'd really like to avoid writing a TRACK BY TRACK but this album is about as far from complex as Cannibal Corpse is from pop music so it would be really hard to talk about it as a whole.
It seems like they forgot how ridiculous those wannabe MATHrock parts sounded on Diamond Eyes and tried to put some MATH into one of the tracks (Leathers) again . (REALLY GUYS? WHY?)
Even though this album is not just laughable but it's HEAVILY OVERRATED, there are a few (two) great moments. The first one is the track "Entombed", it's beautiful. They should write more songs like this instead of the slowed down KoRn b-side tracks. The second is the chorus in the song "Goon Squad". It seems like Chino finally managed to write a catchy melody.
Unfortunately these awesome moments are outnumbered by boring, dull, unconcerned, forced ones such as the main riff in Rosemary that Chino tries to save with his try-to-create-an-atmosphere-but-fails vocal theme. Fun fact this song has some deep polyrhythmic chug-chug that sounds like a bunch of 13 years old kinds were trying to make djent.
But even these ridiculous djent-wannabe parts are decent compared to the ones like those riffs in Poltergeist, Graphic Nature and Tempest. The saddast thing is that the band doesn't even try to save Carpenter, the drum is always monotonous (I'm sure bands like Protest The Hero have more drum themes and tempo/rhythm changes / songs than Deftones has / albums) and the bass barely does anything besides following the ridiculously slow and dull riffs.
To be honest I wanted to 1.5 this album, like I did to the new Everytime I Die album and one of the Karnivool (a pathetic Tool (an awesome band) copycat) albums
but Entombed is just so beautiful that it pulled the final score 0,5 higher... even though this is not a good album I can see some potential here. If they write more songs like Entombed and stop trying to sound like a slower version of KoRn they can hope to become an unique and decent band.
