The Deftones, who are between the ages of 27 and 29, formed in their home town of Sacramento approximately 11 years ago, with a little help from a drunk driver. "I usually say, 'I wouldn't say metal, but it's heavy.' " "People ask if we're a heavy-metal band," says Cheng. There's a lot of dynamics in it, a lot of highs and lows." Our music isn't always straight fast and fiercely loud and aggressive. heaviness emotion-wise, and it carries through all the different sounds that we make. The emotion and the depth behind the music can make it heavy. "Heavy doesn't necessarily have to be power chords or aggressive," he says. Moreno claims that even Louis Armstrong can be considered heavy. It's still called heavy music because there's the loud electric guitar, whatever the style." reggae grooves or anything they feel like putting into the music. The influences now, you'll get bands that are mixing up rap. "Now when people talk about heavy music, they're talking about bands like us, or some of our contemporaries, bands that have grown up listening to different things. "When older people hear about heavy-metal music, they think about the lousy period it went through in the '80s when it was really bad," says Deftones bassist Chi Cheng.
#Deftones albums in d plus
Plus a slew of metal acts influenced by funk and then by hip-hop. (The differences between them can be hard for the untrained ear to discern but are profound to those in the know.) Then there was thudding industrial, which incorporated elements of metal. Just as electronic dance music splintered into various subgenres during the last decade, so too did the hard-rock style once known as heavy metal: Thrash metal. At its heaviest, to me it's a positive thing."Ī quick tutorial for readers of a certain age on the concept of heavy. "Even though our music might have sad points to it, or angry parts to it, it's not fueled by straight hatred, or revenge or pain or anything like that. "I didn't have the greatest childhood in the world, but I didn't have a bad childhood," says Moreno, 27. With a lot of these bands it's like, what-ev-er." It seems to be a theme going through a lot of music, so it's hard for me to take seriously.
"Maybe a lot of people had bad childhoods and now they're just venting, the music is their way of therapy or something like that. "There are a lot of bands now-it started with Korn-that seem like the root of their whole existence is pain and torment," he says. Moreno thinks that part of what sets the Deftones apart is the motivation behind the music. He writes the kind of deliberately obtuse and gruesome lines that lead gullible critics to hail the band as "fiercely intelligent." And front man Chino Moreno's lyrics are harder to get a read on than the uninspired rants of most rock screamers. Their sound is sometimes more moody than mad, changeable, even occasionally ambient on the new album. Listen to the Deftones' punishing music and you might be tempted to place this group in the Angry Young Band category, whose subsets include harrowing fury (Korn), cartoonish ferocity (Slipknot) and frat-boy belligerence (Limp Bizkit, et al.).īut the Deftones don't want to be lumped in with all those acts, which is somewhat understandable. The Deftones' previous albums, "Adrenaline" (1995) and "Around the Fur" (1997), went gold, but only after extensive touring. Instead, these bands sell their albums the hard way: month after month on the road. The Deftones are one of a growing number of heavy rock acts that have managed to build an enormous audience with little to no radio or video play. 3 on Billboard's Top 200 chart, and its first-week sales-178,000-didn't surprise anybody. The band's new album, "White Pony," recently debuted at No. Welcome to the realm of the Deftones, the Sacramento quintet that's captivating a new generation of American rock fans. This is a Deftones show, where that kind of expression counts as audience participation. He is soaked with sweat, his hands clenching his contorted face as he screams.
Inside the crowded Roseland Ballroom, where the guitar blast is so loud it's dizzying, a young man staggers away from the roiling mosh pit.