The Deftones have seen their fair share of ups and downs in the past couple of years, most notably the car accident  of longtime bassist Chi Cheng resulting in a coma. As a result of those unfortunate events, his absence is filled by Sergio Vega (formerly of Quicksand). Those circumstances provide the backdrop which gave birth to Diamond Eyes, with times of pain and grief continuing to foster excellent art.

White Pony will most likely never be topped in my book. It was another album that came a long at the right time with the right songs, the right package… well, everything. I continue many years later to hold that album in pretty high-esteem, and mention it only to put in context that Diamond Eyes may very well be gunning for a close second behind it.

Diamond Eyes leaves Chino focusing on mostly melodic and soulful vocal take, leaving Stephen Carpenter’s guitar work to drive the mostly heavy batch of tracks. From the opening riffs of the title track through “CMND/CTRL”, “Rocket Skates” and others there is very little “down time” to be found. “Beauty School” takes a stab at being more toned down, but even then not so much.  Overall, the album is as in-your-face as ever without necessarily feeling aggressive.

While I’m curious as to what the presently shelved Eros sounds like, this one will hold me over just fine for the foreseeable future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under New Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.