The Deftones and Isolating the Miracle.
(Spotify) || (Apple Music)
In a moment of hubris, I told a friend, “sure, I can recommend some Deftones songs to you.” This was last summer, 2024, and I really thought I was going to be able to commit to finding a quick 5, 10, 15 songs and throw them in a playlist and say, “here ya go, brother. Hope you dig it!” Maybe a song from each record, maybe some singles mixed with some “deep cuts”.
I quickly found that this was an impossibility as my relationship with The Deftones goes far deeper than just a few albums and a collection of songs. Somehow over the nearly THIRTY YEARS (how did this happen?) that I’ve been listening to the band, I’ve created something of a deeper connection to these songs, to these albums, that trying to grant a song or two or a playlist felt more like passing on an ancient scroll than it did giving a friend a chance to check out one of my beloved bands.
This whole journey began in my bedroom while listening to Korn and diving into the liner notes of their record Life Is Peachy where Chino had contributed vocals to a cover of Ice Cube’s ‘Wicked’ and finding out the name of this band and ordering a copy of Adrenaline via mail order. I distinctly remember it showing up and seeing its strange white cover, free from aggression or “edge” and wondering, “Is this the right band?” Even the opening of the record felt somehow innocuous, especially at 14–15 years old, and really craving that caustic riot of music that I had heard from their presence on the Korn record. The album eventually picked up steam and the rest is history.
No, making a playlist for a friend who just wanted to check out a few songs from this band was going to be impossible. I didn’t want to simply give them the tour, show them the ropes and let them dive in. If major (MAJOR) singles like ‘My Own Summer’ and ‘Change’ hadn’t gripped them already, then I would be doing a disservice by simply cherry picking “the good songs” and saying, “Also, White Pony changed my life[/the genre/aggressive music]”. It simply wouldn’t be enough. I truly adore that all Deftones fans have such a ripe relationship with the band, a sort of giant crush on the way that Chino oscillates from manic screams that sound like they’re generated inside an industrial fan and then over to a more tamed and beautiful purr. The band’s dynamics are shaped by their extraordinary variations in taste and style and the rage that broils within the band’s writing session often yields products that are a result of violence and burning inside a deeply emotional kiln.
No, I couldn’t just toss over a few “cool trax”. I took a journey towards the end of last year, popping in and out of their records and trying to find what I thought would be worthy of a Top Ten, and ultimately found the task so difficult that I abandoned the effort. Luckily, a major part of my commitment this year has been that instead of just boasting about projects I want to work on, I will commit, instead, to finishing those things that burn inside me, and then share them. This playlist was really the first one to get me out of the gates. I was going to craft a playlist of my favorite ten Deftones songs and share them over.
I listened to all of the records and by the end of the stretch, I had 23 songs. And even those were found by meticulous combing, painful exclusions, deft insight. Each of these records had something different to say and different ways to say it, and many of these songs sat beautifully in the mix of the rest of their tracklists, but maybe didn’t quite find that same eternal beauty. So that cut a few. Some of the songs really were hanging on by sheer nostalgia, by a reminder of “how” I used those songs, “how” those songs sit with me from certain aspects of my life. So that cut even more. I gave a 17 song playlist another listen and found myself at an impasse. Another three songs were cut based on the fact that there were times where those songs ran a little long and started to lose their impact, at least in terms of trying to package and send this as a TOP TEN songs that I wanted to share with a friend. Definitively. And that brought me to 14.
It started to feel like I was debating with myself about which elements of myself I wanted to pack into a time capsule and send to an outer civilization. In fact, when I first started dating my wife, we were in a long distance relationship that lasted over a year. And in that year, we sent many letters back and forth, many correspondences that carried lots of mixed media. One project that I started was sending a few bands a month based on the letter of the alphabet. And when I got to D, I sent a seven page letter (something we still talk about) about how to approach listening to the Deftones. Where to start. What to expect. What songs are important. And then a full extra letter that prescribed Saturday Night Wrist, and why I think it’s my favorite record in their library. (She eventually ended up getting me both Saturday Night Wrist and OK Computer on vinyl as Christmas gifts, and then surprise revealed a turntable and speakers as well!) So should I have just sent over the same kind of idea?
Hell no.
This had to be done properly.
But listening back through the discography, I found a few new things. I do genuinely love their first three records, but with a different kind of fervor than I do for what followed. I think they manage to do the rap/rock thing so uniquely and expressly differently than so many other bands that follow on Adrenaline. And even in the follow up of Around the Fur (maybe their Nevermind?) where they really showcased that they were capable of stardom and global success, they were doing things with aggressive music that no other bands were considering. There was a deft touch within the mayhem, a singing that wasn’t simply thrown in to break-up the heaviness. There was a poetry in the way that they created these songs. And White Pony was a record that shifted the way I thought about music, I think. It stretched the boundaries for what I expected from my own emotions as I experienced music, and it also altered how I thought about what bands could create within the aspects of “their own sound”. When people come together and behave and create as “A Band”, I often had an idea that they were creating within a certain sphere of creation. White Pony blasted those expectations out of the wall and watched a band create something dynamic and interesting and so far beyond the scope of what I could have imagined when I first heard ‘Bored’ all those years ago. It also came out the summer of my graduation of high school, a perfect record for understanding the way a metamorphosis is bound to occur.
But there’s something different about the next few albums as well. The self-titled Deftones has a distinct feeling of coming back to a place that celebrated the visceral and raw nature of what the band was making at their inception. The songs were ‘smarter’ and more composed, but there’s something so primal and transitional (in both directions) about it.
The next three albums feel like such a profound trilogy to me. This is probably my favorite stretch of Deftones albums as they hold the most ethereal wonder, the most experimentation, the most individualism on each of them. Saturday Night Wrist is still probably, pound for pound, my favorite record of theirs as there is something that feels a bit like “found footage”, something that always howls in a different way. It sits apart from the other albums in every way, from the production to how there seems to be a grain across the spirit of each of the songs. It feels like it was made from beyond a veil, almost an alternate universe of the band coming together and making something remarkable and special and like the result of a white-eyed seance. I’ve often heard that it’s a controversial take, even being told by a friend (who’s the biggest Deftones fan I know) that he can’t believe this is my favorite album and it’s his least favorite. [We clash about it a lot. No idea, man.] I can’t believe how strongly this record starts, with four of the opening tracks easily falling into my Top 20, but then some other songs shaking in there as well. [Can I just say, too, that ‘Pink Cellphone’ would 100% be on this Top Ten if it weren’t for the unnecessary bullshit at the end of the track?] But Diamond Eyes is a close second, for sure. In fact, in a pinch, I’ve often said that I think it, too, can be my favorite. There is still that “more mature” sense of spirituality in these songs, but a harder edge, a more infinite sharpness, a more calculated approach. The way that some of these hooks come together are absolutely surreal, and it still has that enormous sound that only The Deftones can pull off. And the third in this trilogy, Koi No Yokan, brings such indivisible heart and soul, such profound heat, and some of the most repeatable single lines and hooks throughout their entire library. Chino’s lyrics are often minimal that they come close to a fault but instead stick the landing of succinction, leaving just enough of a pin in the photograph to keep your eyes marked on the important parts, but also allow you to create a more personalized and artistic composition in your imagination. I think this record, the third in this perfect trilogy, shows his ability at its maximum height in this sense.
I still haven’t quite found a love for Gore, and while it’s still got some of those unbelievable Deftones heights, it doesn’t really have that one singular song or moment that had me leaving my body. I will add, though, that Ohms deserves FAR more love than I’ve given it and I bet 2025 will have me listening to that record way more and shuffling it into the deck without pause.
Every few years, going back through all of these albums is a treat, and no matter how many songs make it into anyone’s favorites, anyone’s Top Tens or finalized essential playlists, EACH of these full lengths are worth the time you spend with them, and I would love to hear about people’s individual journeys through them.
I’d love to hear what Deftones songs you would put in your top ten!
Please feel free to share!
Email me: steve.cuocci@gmail.com
Instagram: @iamnoimpact
Before I get into the songs themselves, I wanted to include a breakdown of what this list is comprised of:
Adrenaline (1995) (1)
Around the Fur (1997) (1)
White Pony (2000) (2)
Deftones (2003) (2)
Saturday Night Wrist (2006) (2)
Diamond Eyes (2010) (1)
Koi No Yokan (2012) (1)
Gore (2016) (0)
Ohms (2020) (0)
These songs are in order of what felt like flowed the best and don’t necessarily represent any kind of order of favoritism!
Diamond Eyes
off of Diamond Eyes
time will see us realign
This song kicked off the first new record from the band after four years of absence, and I was somewhat nervous (as I am about bands that release album year after year, nervous that somehow a group I love will lose their touch). Right away, the heft and churn that sits on top of the atmospheric buzz truly defines what makes modern Deftones so beautiful and exemplifies their remarkable dynamics. That riff is just so chunky and heavy and thriving, rolling and roiling like a steady pumping of blood through infinite veins. There’s a tangible sparkle to the galactic backdrop the soars through the chorus, a hook that almost acts as a tincture against the gnarled and imperial march of that heavy part. And brother, let’s talk about that breakdown towards the end, likely one of the the heaviest parts the Deftones have on offer to date. (YouTube)
Bloody Cape
off of Deftones
cross your heart
Fast and punishing, Chino swings a massive amount of confidence and power through the chorus after a waxing and waning verse that leads up and into it. This song talks about an infinite ocean and the hopes that the tides will draw them back to home or oblivion or anything other than what lies in between. A perfect example of the band’s penchant for whispering a song and allowing it to take flight, only to see it eventually light on fire and careen into any and all who watch, a brilliant trojan horse of composition. There is nothing more cathartic than the conclusion, with the repetition of “God help me.” It forever lives in my brainstem. (YouTube)
Leathers
off of Koi No Yokan
open your chest, look down, reach in
Soaring and enormous, this song goes outside of the atmosphere and stretches the sky apart like rockets leaving vapor trails, like a horizon you can only see in the strobing of distant eruptions. I think this song shows how BIG the band wants to sound, supporting a sound that can’t be contained on a bed of swirling fuzz and traditional metal riffing, a portrait of the band in all of its various quartering. Vocally this goes massive in the hook and I think it’s one of their most incredible “arena” songs, begging for an endless audience to shout it along with them. (YouTube)
Kimdracula
off of Saturday Night Wrist
i really wish these snakes were your arms
This is a perfect example of the way that the songs on Saturday Night Wrist bend and writhe in wild and haunted directions, taking the production board in ways that it wasn’t initially planning. The cymbals sound almost too staticked out, the vocals get pitched and distorted, the signature riff of the song loops in highly angular and pleading tones. There’s a drudge and a drone to the way that this song marches forward, simple and perpetual, and that’s what makes the chorus feel so pronounced, so desperate and longing, clawing up and out of the lapping tides of how the rest of this spectral track floats along. (YouTube)
Knife Prty
off of White Pony
i can float here forever
Much like the rest of the record from which this song comes, this seems to take on a more narrative progression. As is the norm for so many of the band’s offerings, there aren’t a great deal of lyrics to pull from, but the way that the music develops, it almost seems to tell a chronological story. Especially considering the floating vesper of a voice begins to tease towards the first repetition of the verse, and then it gets introduced in full as it circles the city of this song for the duration. There’s a terrified and wraithlike manner in which this track spirals and encircles the listener, transfixing them in its gaze. White Pony has a very particular sound to its production, very rounded and hollow, metallic and inorganic and I think this song is really heavily served by the way that everything has that kind of sheen to it. Music doesn’t typically surround you in this way, it doesn’t typically arrange itself in a way that feels less like a song and more like a presentation. The entire album feels like it’s taking on the shape of fiction, and I think this is the song that really is the star of the entire piece, taking on dimensions and angles that overflow in a piece that doesn’t even hit the five minute mark. The continual shrieks underneath the chorus give me goosebumps. One of my favorite moments in music, all time. (YouTube)
Xerces
off of Saturday Night Wrist
say heaven
A beautiful chandelier of a track. This one spins and glows like a night at the planetarium, galaxies and solar systems pulsing in a velvet black domed artificial sky. The big pulses of the synths, the long drags of audio beds, the fragile vocals forming palm prints on the veil between atmosphere and vacuum all create this escape pod of emotion, floating in orbit above a shrinking planet that we’re casting a farewell to. I think this song does a really great job of creating an anhedonic environment as you look into the rearview of something that’s falling apart in its own private apocalypse. Ghostflames take shape around the listeners heart, going massive and tremendous and casting a light in the color of deep space. This song reminds me of stretching beyond one’s means for something that’s slowly soaring out of reach. (YouTube)
Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event
off of Deftones
no more gold lights
This song was the first time outside of White Pony that they did anything like this, something that felt very out-of-character, like being possessed by an entirely different entity creating something for a different audience. I had always heard Chino talk about how The Cure and Bjork were huge inspirations and I truly believe this song is one where both of those influences show up with bravado. Clanking and discordant toy piano plinks along in the background while a mantric tambourine keeps time and the vocals hypnotically construct a missive in a requiem for someone, for something lost. It feels like an aural pyre, a viking funeral in headphones, truly something ritualistic and chanted. There are certainly spikes of emotion that show up throughout the Deftones library as this is one of the most emotionally charged aggressive bands of our time, but somehow I think this is the song that bares the most and expresses it in a way that could likely go on forever. (YouTube)
Birthmark
off of Adrenaline
god, i’ll even lick her fucking picture
Going back to their earliest days, ‘Birthmark’ presents as such a ratty and dirty song. The production is grungy and fucked and I think that adds to the depravity, to the incessant desires that Chino is expressing. That really massive note that he hits blew me away at the time, and it’s not because of the vocal skill that he’s employing (not so much that it’s a skill thing, but a choice of note that I hadn’t heard up until that point and I honestly don’t think I do again outside of the Deftones pantheon), but moreso that it was unlike anything happening in music at that time. This band was primed to change everything. Each time I look up lyrics to this song, I get a little disappointed, because I guess he’s saying, “drinks won’t stain this birth” but I always loved the imagery I was hearing in my own translation of the song where I thought he was saying “dreams won’t stain this bed.” While we’re talking lyrics, I also loved the outright obsession of being so drawn to the subject of this song that he would “lick her fucking picture”. This song has such a groove to it, really sticking to such a specific cut through most of the song, letting the vocal lines take the lead and being more of a guide than a orchestration until the big note kind of unleashes the more toothy riffs. The outro of this song really brings us back to the mid to late 90s with that poppy, jumpy nu-metal grind, but the artistry that this song touches on really hinted at some major things for a band that I didn’t know would totally obliterate all of my expectations for what aggressive bands could accomplish. (YouTube)
Digital Bath
off of White Pony
tonight, i feel like more
A new skin. That’s what this song granted. I hadn’t yet truly discovered electronic music, post-rock, soundscapes, trip-hop… anything cool and mellow and transformative like that. Digital Bath was the first time I’d really been transported off of the earth and into a new metaphysical plane by a song. This song sounds like it’s created by a different species, like it’s trying to accomplish something different than other songs had done in my history up to that point. This song is important in ways that I don’t think I can truly emphasize. It slowly established and erected a colony away from the grounded reality that I had always associated with music. It previously had been “about” entertainment, about releasing energy, about expressing “rage” and “love” and then this song did something else. It did more. It reached inside a place of me that needed to know a different element of beauty, a different kind of sensuality that didn’t require a subject or a finitude, just a new eternity on the scales of emotion, a new gauge, a new order of magnitude. (YouTube)
Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
off of Around the Fur
i’m fast to get away, far
One of the greatest songs of all time. This is a song that set a new ceiling on beauty for me at an early age, though as an emotionally scant adolescent, I don’t think I really knew what I was experiencing at the time. Beauty. I was experiencing it profoundly in all pronunciations of its essence, from lyrics to notes to pacing. This song didn’t need a chorus or a verse or expressive lyrics to take the sound that they had harnessed and to turn it into something transformative. There’s an energy that’s tapped into during that long resonant static right before the song kicks back, a way that I drone into my own internal timeline, honing and sharpening some personal metronome, pulling all nerve endings and senses into one telescoping lens and waiting for that buried high hat to signal that this song is about to come back and explode into stellar shrapnel. I think there’s such a powerful revelation in the singular lyric (that doesn’t even conclude or expand on the thought!) “I dressed you in her clothes”. Every time I hear that line, I think of all of the times that I project expectations on other people (Hims and Hers and Thems) based on my previous experiences instead of allowing all of the new to be The New. (YouTube)
