Deftones - Diamond Eyes (music review)

Nu metal bands saturated the end of the 90's with all the worst parts of the 90's: angst towards some vague offender, hatred for oneself, useless dj's, unnecessary use of lame white guys rapping, blah blah blah. I could go on; this isn't anything new for anyone who remembers the 90's.

Anyways, amongst all the new shit rock, all the Limp Bizkits and Nickelbacks and Korns, there were the Deftones. And the Deftones really are a strange breed: straightforward enough to please the retards who listened to Durst (admittedly, myself included), melodic, even clever enough to get the attention of reputable critics, and catchy enough to get some decent mainstream play. But with screaming.

The most amazing part about this band, especially when you consider the scene they came up in, is that they're still going strong; the shelf life on most of those shit bands they were associated with was maybe 7 years, tops. But not only are they on their sixth release, Diamond Eyes, they wrote and set aside a whole other album in the last two years. That effort was to be called Eros.

Eros was supposed to be them experimenting with a new sound, taking the band in a new direction. Chino is quoted as saying he wanted it to sound as “weird as possible without alienating people”. Chi Cheng, their bassist, was hospitalized with a coma after his bus crashed on Novermber 8th of 2008, and a few months later they put Eros on hiatus and started working on Diamond Eyes. They say the two things are unrelated, but for an album that wasn't written because their bassist is in a coma, it sure as hell sounds like a band trying to relax because their bassist is in a fucking coma.

First of all, look at the history of bands that try experimenting with new material. Radiohead damn near broke up during the Kid A sessions because they argued over creative directions and were unsure of themselves. Likewise with Pink Floyd, arguing over creative direction in the 80's causes the band to break up. I'm not saying the Deftones were on their way to splitting up; I'm not even saying they were arguing. I'm saying that moving in a new direction often causes stress of some kind, and if your bassist is in the hospital, the last thing I'd imagine you wanting to do is something even remotely stressful.

So, my whole point is that Diamond Eyes is a through and through typical Deftones album, because that's what they needed to make right now. Nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary, no extensive long odd instrumentals with strange talking in the background about anal-sex or whatever, no really oddly placed electronic parts. Just a collection of standard Deftones style songs. The really heavy track (CMND/CTRL and Rocket Skates), the quiet or more melodic one (Beauty School and Sextape), the obvious soon-to-be-fan-favourite and live-show-closer (976-EVIL, I hope). Just your bread and butter Deftones.

And that's not so much a bad thing. It sounds like the band just wanted to get an album out. They didn't like the approach they took to Saturday Night Wrist, a process that has been described as being 'Piece by piece', which to me sounds like a focus on multi-tracking (which is not that much fun for this kind of band). It sounds like a band in the studio engaging their hobby, and committing it to recording. This might as well have been what they did before, or after, going bowling on a Wednesday night.

“Hey guys, want to get together? Wife's busy, I've got nothin to do, what say we grab some brews, bowl a couple games, maybe write a whole fucking album?”
“Yeah sure man, why not, lets just churn out a whole fucking album like we usually do.”

Thankfully, 'how they usually do' sounds pretty fucking good.

So by all means, the album isn't groundbreaking, it's just a great album. Because it's a great album, it attests to how fucking well these guys get along, and how on top of their shit they are. They don't lose a member and decide break up. They don't lose a member and then completely lose their shit. They don't use the opportunity to do some monumental tribute to their lost bassist; across the 5 listens I've put in, I can't really pick out any solid Chi references.

To sum it all up, Deftones are still that band that should have sucked but didn't, and they're still putting out good albums that are worthy of purchase. When your friends are reminiscing about how shitty their taste in music was circa 1999, you can still toss in “but Deftones are still pretty rad...”, you get some weird looks at first until everyone remembers, “oh yeah...” Or maybe you're taking some cute girl out to a Vampire Weekend show, and she's complaining about her friends going to the dive bars for metal bands, complaining about metal as a whole. You nod your head to agree, but then remember, “oh fuck, Deftones.” I don't advise telling her that.

I fucking love the Deftones, I might talk her ear off all night about how Diamond Eyes is a good album. I might be going to sleep alone... But the point still stands.