It was the sound of a band following their muse away from a disreputable trend and into the great unknown.Īs Moreno told The Ringer in a new oral history of the album, breaking away from the nu-metal pack was both natural and intentional.
With White Pony, released 20 years ago this Saturday, they ceased to make sense within the existing containers, even as they caused lightbulbs to go off for legions of listeners who’d stick with them long after the nu-metal hype faded away. While their alleged peers were presenting a caricature of adolescent rage, Deftones were telling alluring stories of sex, drugs, and violence, visceral and blurry adult content in an age of arrested development. Rhythmically, melodically, lyrically, they were creating their own language, or at least twisting existing dialects into disorienting new shapes. The style they were cultivating didn’t just stand alone within their genre it marked Deftones as an island unto themselves in the popular music landscape. They were Depeche Mode gone beast mode, Meshuggah run through a Sade filter, Faith No More as directed by David Fincher. But by slathering this barrage with goth brooding, new wave glamour, and shoegaze haze, they’d zeroed in on a more artful breed of sleazy aggression. Scene signifiers like detuned riffs, DJ scratches, and vigorous bass popping still abounded, and Chino Moreno launched into throat-shredding tirades or syncopated scat tantrums at least as often as he whimpered and wailed.
With their second album, 1997’s Around The Fur, the punishingly heavy Sacramento band had established themselves as a unique presence under the nu-metal umbrella, blowing out the skate-park rap-rock of their 1995 debut Adrenaline into dreamy, mascara-smudged grandeur.
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