Slinking away from gray streets, slick with rain and shimmering under neon, we take rest on a dusty concrete stoop to remember where we all came from...
#3
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Growing up a rock n' roller pre-Napster and post-Nirvana was growing up in a forbidding, angst-filled place. MTV's last candle as taste enforcer was running out of oxygen - fast. It's quite possible we were the last generation to avoid a full-blown case of Retromania. The inoculants were effective but not exactly brilliant, of course. Korn, blink-182 and Limp Bizkit stood front-and-centre on MTV's hype platform, teenage Middle America's fatuous expression of discomfort and angst. It served us pop, pop, pop all the way down. Pop muddied with downtuned riffs and greasy hundred-dollar dreadlocks whipping about. Pop with puffed-up chests topped with caps drawn backwards. Pop so brazen in its appropriation of modern pop, it dressed up as pop, sounded like pop and cheekily dared people to sit up and spot the difference. Christ, just how dumb were we? Deftones weren't quite fed through the teen IV drip of camouflaged pop music. They were revered, but the millionaires who were twice our age saw far more than kernels of truth in their despondent bizzaro metal jams. Genre masterpiece White Pony seethed with raw cynicism and bleakness, unfit for an age of abundance and freewheeling within acceptable PMRC limits. Over ten years on, Deftones' wounds are still raw. Rawer still from the agonizingly slow recovery of Chi Cheng from a car accident and estrangement from what made them a functional collection of dope-throned wasteoids. Years of nervous burnout takes its toll on most bands but Deftones didn't find themselves empty and wanting, they just dug deeper. Buried underneath was the bittersweetness of failed love, painful reminders and the courage to endure.
From the review in Hysteria Magazine #13:
Trip-hop-lite inspired Graphic Nature continues Moreno's vampire-like draining of colour from his world [...] They reach for the occasional Faith No More-ism and obtuse bass driven creepiness (Poltergeist) and delve into prog-rock live from after the apocalypse (Rosemary, What Happened to You?) each yawning chorus and severe riff as compelling as the one which came before. Their cohesiveness on this sprawling piece undoubtedly required a soul-searching and depth rivalling their past selves. Deftones may have beat out their adolescent wrath, but at what cost? One of their finest hours.
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The Top 10 Metal of 2012
#4 - Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light
#5 - Killing Joke - MMXII
#6 - The Faceless - Autotheism
#7 - Be'lakor - Of Breath and Bone
#8 - Baroness - Yellow & Green
#9 - Rush - Clockwork Angels
#10 - Barren Earth - The Devil's Resolve
The Honorable Mentions