Deftones Deftones [Black Vinyl LP]

Chances are, you made up your mind about this band two decades ago, and nothing I’m gonna say is gonna change that. But if you came of age in a certain musically-infertile part of the late 90s / early 2000s (not pre-Internet per se but wayyy before Web 2.0), the Deftones always had something more to offer than their nu-metal peers. If you stuck around after the rawness of Adrenaline and the breakthrough Around The Fur, then you were lucky enough to experience a rich pool of influences that the band wore on their sleeve more and more obviously with each new record, incorporating elements of shoegaze, ambient, electronica, dreampop, hardcore punk and R&B. Fans hated this one when it came out, but not me. I loved how far they veered into the two distant poles of their sound, doubling down on the experimentalism of White Pony and churning out some of the fiercest ear-piercing metal (“When Girls Telephone Boys,” “Hexagram,” “Needles And Pins”) and sublime downtempo balladry (“Anniversar