Deftones

05/27/2003 10:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Rob O'Connor

Nu-metal has its fans. But it sure is curious how its practitioners sound most focused when they're least aping its aggressive edge. By challenging the rules of the game and injecting the brazen metal attack with textures borrowed not just from earlier generations of art-rock but shoegazers and alt-rockers of every alternate tuning stripe Deftones make a fourth album that points to a maturity that could one day make them a most important hard rock ensemble. That's not to say that Chino Moreno is done hoarsely shouting his diatribes (old habits die hard if at all), but it does mean that Frank Delgado's keyboards and sampling and Moreno's guitar works have the chance to one day escape the crunching, numbing carpel-tunnel inducing rhythms that make so much of this music as deadening as a 24-hour working-class factory. The album's first single "Minerva" leads to the way-out with its nimble moodiness. Now, it's time for everything else to fall in line.