“Soon, I’ll let you go. Soon, this will be all over”. The words of the opening track off White Pony, “Feiticeira”, ring out like a statement and not merely just words. Perhaps that’s the great duality of what Deftones really brought to the table on their highly influential (and arguably magnum opus) 3rd album, White Pony. Released as nu-metal had become arguably the biggest subgenre of rock and metal music, White Pony is Deftones at their experimental and atmospheric peak. The way they decided to go against the grain of what everyone had come to expect from them – namely, the opportunity to write something that resembled a sequel to their album Around The Fur – is to be admired.
White Pony is Deftones at their best, as well as their most influential. Their first flirtation with Massive Attack-esque trip-hop (“Teenager”) successfully captures the innocence of youth, while “RX Queen” is about obsessing over a girl who can’t fight addiction, specifically drugs. Most of their iconic songs are here, too. Massive single that is almost instantly recognizable? “Change (In The House Of Flies)” has you covered. Fantastic duet that happened totally by chance in the studio? “Passenger” (which features Tool/APC’s Maynard James Keenan) is an absolutely thrilling vocal tradeoff between Chino Moreno and Maynard that’s an instant classic. In the current landscape of half-baked and boring “guest vocal” spots where the guest vocalist in question spits around 4 lines and adds nothing to the song (obviously a cash grab), Chino and Maynard’s instant chemistry and real emotion make this arguably the best song on the album.
The leap between Around The Fur and White Pony was indeed a quantum level one for Deftones. In fact, the album would inspire other bands in the two+ decades to come to make their own staggering musical shifts. Thrice’s Vheissu is a notable example. As one of the best albums released in a wild year for music in 2000, it still stands out for its genre-hopping tendencies, still incorporating enough heavy guitar to satisfy the band’s older fans while also integrating new influences that would become commonplace soon after. In fact, alongside the likes of Orgy, Linkin Park, and Korn to an extent, there were very few bands in the nu-metal era that had obvious synthpop and new wave influences in their music, making White Pony‘s eclectic nature stand out even more.
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