Send "Deftones " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Absolutepunk |
 It was supposed to be the album that brought Deftones back to the top of the rock universe. Their upcoming sixth album, Eros, was to be their most aggressive and personal album to date. The most unified the band has ever been. There was minimal arguing between vocalist Chino Moreno and guitarist Stephen Carpenter, both notorious for going at each other’s throats during past recordings. This was supposed to showcase this band at its best, ready to turn our world upside down. Then Deftones’ world got flipped. On November 4th, 2008, bassist Chi Cheng was seriously injured in a car crash, which left him in a coma. While he is now in a minimally conscious state, the band shelved Eros indefinitely. In January 2009, the band released a statement announcing that former Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega would take over at bass during Cheng’s absence. With Cheng’s condition weighing heavily on their minds, Deftones returned to the studio that summer with a new mindset and direction. What emerged from those sessions is Diamond Eyes, an album that showcases the best work of the band’s illustrious two decades-plus career. While Deftones’ last two albums, the self-titled effort and Saturday Night Wrist, have plenty of highlights, they came across as incohesive bodies of work. For every killer track like “Hexagram” or “Cherry Waves,” there were the quizzical cuts like “Lucky You” and “Pink Telephone.” With Diamond Eyes, the band takes every high point from their entire discography and fuses them together to create their heaviest and most ambient album to date. While Deftones have always taken polarizing sounds and dynamics and melded them into something beautifully destructive, Diamond Eyes takes it to a new level. It’s vicious yet sensitive, despairing while still maintaining a sliver of hopefulness....full text |
| Avclub |
| There are moments on Deftones’ first new disc since 2006—and first without bassist Chi Cheng, who’s been in a minimally conscious state since a 2008 car accident—that sound a bit like a band on auto-pilot. Luckily, though, the title track and “Royal” stomp such limp moments with pleasingly crude riffs that claw and scrape through the verses, then release Chino Moreno’s voice into glimmering, menacing choruses. Moreno and guitarist Stephen Carpenter shove back and forth on “CMND/CTRL” as if trying to slam each other off-beat, charging up the tension and nuance that so many of Deftones’ hard-rock contemporaries lack. “You’ve Seen The Butcher” holds a grim, slo-mo tribute to Jawbox between its snare hits and dragged-out catchiness. This should feel strange next to the trip-hop shading of “Beauty School,” except “Prince” comes up next to reconcile the two with a hook built from squirming bass and stabs of guitar noise. The verse of “Rocket Skates” achieves a giddy accelerate-decelerate effect, and Carpenter’s Meshuggah-checking guitar figure perforates the groove in between. Then comes the full-on tenderness of “Sextape.” Granted, freedom to roam does come standard with Deftones, as do the many chunky and graceful tendencies of Diamond Eyes. What matters is that the band can still find different—and fun—ways to combine and contrast it all....full text |
| Ew |
| In 2008, while this metal act was working on its sixth full-length, a car crash put bassist Chi Cheng in a coma. (He remains in a minimally conscious state.) His bandmates sidelined those sessions and recorded this new album, Diamond Eyes, without him. The first third feels like primal-scream therapy, with frontman Chino Moreno howling himself even rawer than usual. More original are the quieter numbers that show off Deftones' subtleties. B...full text |
Deftones lyrics
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