A Nice White Pony

06/19/2000 2:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
David John Farinella

The sounds coming from the studio where the Deftones are mixing their latest album, White Pony, are new to bassist Chi Cheng. "We get kind of worried because [singer/ guitarist] Chino [Moreno] really doesn't give us nothin' until he feels it's done," he says from the studio's lounge. Then he's quick to add of the sessions, "I think they're unbelievable, they're great. Everything is really coming together nicely."

Coming together nicely? No doubt, since White Pony is sure to push the Deftones from the level of fan favorites up to that of worldwide sensations. Before the album was released in the States, the lads--Moreno, Cheng, drummer Abe Cunningham, turntablist Frank Delgado, and guitarist Stephen Carpenter--took their bombastic rock 'n' roll overseas to rave reviews. And the single, "Change (In The House Of Flies)," was the No.1 most-added song on rock radio.

Nice.

This is not the same Deftones fans discovered upon the release of their 1995 debut, Adrenaline, or even the 1997 follow-up, Around The Fur. As Cheng asserts, "This is definitely a progression. We didn't really think about it, but we kind of reinvented ourselves on this album...A lot of it is more ambient and crazy and deep, and we push the envelope as far as we felt like we wanted to. But we still instill our stuff. There's still room and depth and emotion in it. There's a lot of struggle in it, and I think that comes across."

Cheng's not concerned that fans will turn away from the band because of the new sound. "I'm sure our fans will like it. Our fans have learned about us the hard way," he explains. "They're not going to hear the single on the radio and then say, 'Yeah, I hear it all the time.' They dug to find us, and I think they appreciate us for putting out new music instead of them liking the way we look or dress. They're like us, they earned it."

Yes, the Deftones have earned it. Back in 1989 Moreno, Carpenter, and Cunningham first got together to jam some Metallica and Danzig covers in the guitarist's garage. Growing up in Sacramento, Calif.--a town that's still more agricultural than cosmopolitan--they played their first gig, a backyard barbecue, when they were in their mid-teens. Around 1990 Cheng joined the fray, mostly because he dug their sound, partly because he looked like a member of the metal band Death Angel.

Those early days weren't spent dreaming of the big time. "One of the beauties of being from Sacramento, at least back then and probably to a certain degree still, is that we never thought about getting signed at all," Cheng says. "It was kind of like a joke: 'Yeah, maybe we'll get signed one day, or we'll be big, or on the cover of magazines.' We were more into, 'Let's write these great songs that make us happy and hopefully we can play some clubs and maybe they'll give us some free beer and make five bucks.'"

They got that free beer and five bucks playing around Sacramento, then headed into Reno and San Francisco. As for the songs, Cheng explains the key was to write without any formula in mind. "We've never said, 'Okay, let's be this kind of band.' We just got into a room and banged it out. Everybody's got their different musical tastes and we don't really talk about what we want to sound like, we just write until all five of us like it. Then if we all like it, we keep it; 90% of our stuff gets thrown away."

The 10% that got kept for White Pony includes the bashing opener "Feiticeria," the soaring "RX Queen," and the epic "Pink Maggit," which spans seven-and-a-half minutes. With a laugh, Cheng admits of the latter song, "I have no idea what it's about. It's a really emotional song, it's not like straightforward heavy." And that odd sound you hear? "We used a human heart[beat] that synched up to the kick and the snare drum, which was really trippy."

One of the most intriguing songs on the album is "Passenger," which was co-written and co-sung with Maynard James Keenan of Tool/ A Perfect Circle fame. "Maynard is an unbelievably talented human being," says Cheng. "Everything he does is cool and it's definitely cool to have him come in and give us his input." That said, the band wasn't looking for a revolving door of guests. "I don't think our band feels like we care to use a famous guest artist as a crutch so much as having somebody come in and enhance it," he says. "And if we can learn from it, we can grow."

And after all, growing is the point. "We tend to do things the hard way instead of taking shortcuts," Cheng states. "We fought really hard to make our own scene instead of being a part of something else. I definitely feel like we've reached a nice spot of success, but we can take it a lot further."