It's kind of hard to believe that it's been nearly ten years since Deftones released Adrenaline, their first album for the Madonna-owned Maverick Records.  Yeah, that came out 1994, y'all.  Oh, how they have changed over the years.  Where Adrenaline just blew me away with ferocity, anger and passion, their fourth, self-titled effort blows me away with sincerity, maturity and passion.  As it stands, Deftones is one of the front runners for my Album of the Year for 2003.

    From the opener "Hexagram" to the closer "Moana," Deftones is abso-freakin'-lutely top-notch.  The production is flawless (thanks to the band sticking with Andy Sneap, who has done their previous records), the songs fit together and the band finds themselves at the pinnacle of their game.  It's no surprise to me at all why they decided to self-title this album.

    I'll be one of the first people to admit that their previous record, White Pony, took a while to grow on me.  It was so markedly different from what they'd done before that I had to accept this new sound they were producing.  And, as some CD reviewer (whose name escapes me at the moment) pointed out so correctly, Chino was thoroughly and completely outclassed by Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan on White Pony's "Passenger."  He obviously took notes during that particular session.

And now, a segue:  I love comparisons.  They're great for relating to people who don't know about what you're talking about, but might know something else.  Allow me to compare Deftones to some other discs in my collection, if you will.

    First of all, this is the sort of album that both Glassjaw and Staind should have done on their sophomore major-label efforts.  Unfortunately, the songs on Glassjaw's Worship and Tribute sound too disparate from one another and never come together.  There are some good tunes, but the parts are much more prevalent than the whole.  Plus, they got Ross Robinson's dirty hands into the mix, and he absolutely *massacred* the tremendous sound they'd achieved with Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence.  Trust me, after Korn's debut album, Ross went downhill REALLY fast (Why else would he produce Vanilla Ice's first foray into rap-metal?).  Sepultura's Roots was an okay Robinson production, but that's about it.

    Staind made the mistake of listening to their wallets and put out the blah-zay Break the Cycle.  It was an okay album (just "okay," mind you), from start to finish, but one song just blended into the next, blended into the next, blended into the next.  Mid-paced whine-fests courtesy of Aaron Lewis and Co. that didn't come close to the potential heralded in Dysfunction.  Maybe that's what they wanted to do, and more power to 'em.  I just won't buy any more of their crappy CDs.

    On the other hand, Deftones can immediately fall into another, more favorable category of CDs that I really, really enjoy.  The two bands I'm thinking of this time are Skycamefalling and Toad the Wet Sprocket (sorry, LC).  Both of these bands produced efforts that defied the norm and separated them from the pack they ran with.

    Skycamefalling's brilliant 10.21 was metalcore played mellow.  Precise, deft musicianship amidst a lonely atmosphere.  It rocked like a mutha, but for some reason I listen to it when I want to chill out.  It's a fascinating paradox of musical styles that speaks for the talent and depth of that (now-defunct) band.  If heavy music can be subdued, Skycamefalling mastered the performance of it on 10.21.

    Conversely (yet not so), Toad the Wet Sprocket's commercially-successful Dulcinea could easily be described as an angry folk-pop album.  The songs were clean, but were played with passion, aggression and heart (something I wish a lot of other commercially successful bands would do these days).  For the most part Dulcinea stays in the background, but it comes out and grabs your attention when it needs to.  My friend Lantz (quite more the stereotypical metalhead than I) absolutely loved this album and shamelessly spoke its praises.

    [As an odd side note, both of these bands broke up not long after these releases.  Skycamefalling disbanded earlier this year, while Toad the Wet Sprocket released only one more studio album before calling it quits.  Maybe they realized they'd done all they could do?]

    It is with these latter two efforts that I rightfully place the new Deftones.  It's far removed from the tripe and bilge that pollutes most of mainstream modern rock radio, but fits in nicely nonetheless.  Lead singer Chino Moreno said recently that a lot of fans were turned off by their last effort, White Pony, which saw Adrenaline's and Around the Fur's unbridled anger transmogrified into a beautiful passion not matched by any other of the "nü-metal" bands.  White Pony traded in mosh-friendly riffing for trippy atmospherics (thanks in no small part to the addition of DJ Frank Delgado), yet still retained a gritty edge that kept the Deftones firmly in the hard rock arena.  Deftones retains that edge ("When Girls Telephone Boys" has probably the heaviest Deftones riff I've ever heard, and features Abe Cunningham's first recorded foray into double-bass), and keens it to a sharpness that any samurai would be proud of.

    Oh, and if you had any questions about Chino's vox beforehand, this album settles them.  Chino, in fact, DOMINATES the rest of the nü-metal singer kingdom after flexing his skills on this album, and screw you if you don't agree with me.  Jonathan Davis can't sing, nor will he ever be able to (which is fine because his voice fits Korn's music just the same).  Aaron Lewis can't scream without the aid of a funnel on his mic (which is fine because he traded in his jeans for a skirt on Break the Cycle).  Linkin Park needs TWO singers to modestly replicate what Moreno can do on his own with ease.  Chino has fully matured into his voice, never stressing it beyond his means unless it fits within the song structure (like on "Hexagram," where he lets his extended scream degrade and crack with guitarist Stephen Carpenter's sustained chording).  For the most part, his voice soars above the music, raging with authority only when needed.

    The enhanced CD also packs some nice extras, including a super-sweet screensaver, a huge still-photo gallery and video clips of the band members in their "every day" lives.  My personal (and Roastbeef's) favorites are bassist Chi Cheng's montage, with him looking and acting like some sort of drunken Indian on the reservation (Please, God, forgive that last statement; I wouldn't say it if it weren't funny.), and drummer Abe Cunningham's clip, which shows him sporting some sort of jeweled chalice that has "Rock Star" spelled out in some sort of faux or genuine gemstone.  High comedy, to be sure.

    A lot of bands have found success with their particular sound and have stuck with it for good or ill (Metallica, Linkin Park and Staind to name a few recent examples).  Very few bands have the gonads that the Deftones showed in switching gears like they did in between Around the Fur and White Pony.  If Deftones is any sort of indication of the direction they're headed, there's no doubt in my mind that they made the right choice in taking this path.  Nice work, guys, and here's to hoping that we'll see more of it down the road.

Rating: EXACTLY FUCKING RIGHT out of 10