the deftones album poll

idk! prob koi no yokan rn

I'm leaning towards that, narrowly over Gore, though I've always had a soft spot for the s/t

One of those records that sounds like it was absolutely draining and joyless to make but there's something beautiful about the sheer bloody-minded effort

there's something about the pacing of koi no yokan that makes it feel like you're advancing deeper into it as each track happens, these already enormous rock songs getting wider and more liquid as they go, and then you just kinda end up unmoored in this really sinister and uncertain place with "what happened to you?" it's a pretty chilling effect. ofc they uh generally really know how to close an album, the last three songs on gore being maybe the best example of it yet

it's an incredible record and I'm still irrationally annoyed about Pitchfork deciding Gore represented their unequivocal redemption or w/ever

I am kind of fascinated by Saturday Night Wrist as a portrait of a band at war with itself, veering off in wildly divergent directions

oh yeah saturday night wrist is way underestimated afaict. it was my favorite for a minute before i figured out how much i liked diamond eyes. it's the only record of theirs that really feels like a sprawl

Diamond Eyes is the only one that just kinda sounds like a collection of (very good!) songs to me rather than a cohesive statement, a sort of "we've still got it" statement in the wake of Cheng's injury. I should give it a relisten.

i get having that impression but god all those songs are so good. the three song suite about chi at the end ;_;

Clearly I need a relisten.

Deep cut worthy of excavation: "Lovers"

the 2003 s/t... never kept up with them, don't know why, i really liked that record but i barely remember it. i remember seeing the video for whatever the first single was on mtv around this time of year, maybe later in june?

sorry to be that guy on this thread but i've always meant to check out this band beyond the one or two songs i am somewhat familiar with and like. maybe i'll do that this summer because of this poll.

White Pony, of course.

I have a nostalgic attachment to White Pony but these days it'd be between Gore and Koi no yokan. I lost interest after the s/t but then decided to catch up with what I'd missed at some point (2013 according to last.fm), Saturday Night Wrist never clicked but they've had a great run with the last three albums.

haven't heard a few of them but it's hard to see anything topping koi no yokan, brad's description is spot-on. the cover is also i think really evocative, geometric lines made of luminescent blurs; the riffs are sharp but i guess in the way waves have edges that fall into the whole body (so yeah, liquid). plus the interlocking rhythms, highlighted at the start of "poltergeist" and what happened to you?" -- abe cunningham is such a good drummer -- it really feels incomparable in encapsulation

i actually like around the fur a good bit more than white pony, it'd probably be runner-up for me atm

The only thing I've missed from their recent records is their occasional guitar-free experiments a la "Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event," one of my favourite songs ever

predict a silent majority of white pony voters when the results are revealed

Pony

x-post:

Yup, the very same. It was definitely a big album for them here, probably their biggest.

I find the pre- and post- Chi periods interesting. It feels like losing him gave them the kick in the ass they needed (that no memos, meetings or lawsuits from Maverick would provide); it gave them a focal point, a uniting adversity to push against. It seems kinda counter-intuitive that a tragedy like that could galvanize a band, but they've always been a pretty counter-intuitive band.

two years ago me and my best friend spent a whole day listening to every album (except 'adrenaline' which i tend to forget).
i've a soft spot for 'white pony' because i started to listen to them with it... and it has 'feiticeira'. but 'koi no yokan' and 'gore' are really really
great. impossible task.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

revisited the s/t the other day and it's a weirdly punishing record which also contains what i think is their most accessible song ("minerva")

no more gold lights for the queen earth

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

So what we've learned is that way more people should check out the latter-day records.

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