Friday, May 14, 2010

Diamond Eyes

These initial thoughts:

It is a consensus record, this is a retelling of six past LPs in one effort.

The Deftones have not written their heaviest and weirdest songs here but it sounds like at least the opener and title track is one of their best.

Gone is any real sense of experimentation (I think a good thing as it reached its terminus with Team Sleep).

If one emotion rules it is sadness. That comes from the obvious place of bassist Chin Cheng's car accident and subsequent coma 18 months ago.

The replacing (filling in) of Cheng with former Quicksand boom man Sergio Vega does nothing to the enormous sound of a band that never really seemed like their nu-metal colleagues. Vega is faithful.

There are three iTunes bonus tracks - Do You Believe, Ghosts and Caress - they're all worthy. Ghosts in particular comes from my favourite Deftones place of slow and aching.

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