Deftones

Deftones are a multi-platinum selling, Grammy award winning hard rock band from Sacramento, California. Personnel are Chino Moreno (vocals, guitar), Stephen Carpenter (guitar), Abe Cunningham (drums), Chi Cheng (bass) and turntablist/keyboardist/sampler player Frank Delgado. (Incidentally, Carpenter is generally credited with "strings", though if he actually plays anything other than electric guitar it's not immediately apparent.)

Deftones

Deftones, was released in 2003. It sold 167,000 copies in the first week and remained in the Billboard top 100 for nine weeks, supported by the first single "Hexagram" which received some radio and television airplay. Later, the band shot a video for "Hexagram" with fans watching the band play the song. The band made a video for the track "Bloody Cape", but it was never released for play on television. The video was only made available on the band's official website for one day.

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Much of the material on the album was written by guitarist Carpenter, which accounts for the album's more traditionally heavy metal feel. Delgado plays synthesizer, keyboards or sampler rather than his previous turntables.

Related Topics:
Heavy metal - Synthesizer - Keyboards - Sampler

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In reviewing Deftones Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes that "Hexagram," the album's opener, " hits hard — harder than they ever have, revealing how mushy Staind is, or how toothless Linkin Park is, even if it's a bit of a shame that Chino Moreno has resorted to guttural barking for singing."

Related Topics:
Hexagram - Staind - Linkin Park

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Erlewine is slightly bothered, however, noting that "Deftones feel compelled to strengthen their metallic roots" by forsaking "the very things that make them better and more interesting than the rest — namely, their love of art rock, whether it's via the Cure or My Bloody Valentine." He closes by writing, "When they do play by the rules, they're good, but they're great when they don't follow a map."

Related Topics:
Metallic - Art rock - The Cure - My Bloody Valentine - Map

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Another review, by Rolling Stone's Greg Kot states, "Singer Chino Moreno sounds like he's conversing with a choir of voices inside his troubled skull. He's the most Dada of the new-metal screamers: sobbing, stoned and strangely sensual, when he isn't shredding his tonsils. The band brings the requisite brutality, but this album delivers chills when it creeps past the margins of modern post-Korn heavy music: the spooky spaghetti-western drones that hover like vultures over 'Death Blow,' the space-is-the-place liftoff of 'Minerva' and the ambient doomscape 'Lucky You,' which might be worth an approving smirk from the Aphex Twin. Just when new metal seemed utterly played out, Deftones blows open the possibilities."http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/_/id/300293/deftones?pageid=rs.Artistcage&pageregion=triple1

Related Topics:
Rolling Stone - Tonsils - Korn - Spaghetti-western - Vulture - Ambient - Aphex Twin - New metal

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