Deftones Return with Diamond Eyes; An End to our Incantations?

It’s been a while since we’ve written about the Deftones here at girl­pants, not least because I’m the only one here who can stand them and because they haven’t put out an album in three-plus years. Nev­er­the­less, the some­what unlikely search term “Chino Moreno fat” keeps pulling vis­i­tors in to our blog. It’s so suc­cessful that in our darkest hours we sit in a circle around a can­dlelit hexa­gram on the office floor and chant it over and over again to summon the hit spirits: “Chino Moreno fat, Chino Moreno fat, Chino Moreno fat.”

Well, a lot of things have changed since I wrote about Sat­urday Night Wrist in 2006. First of all, Chino’s not fat any­more. It looks like he’s started taking his physique seri­ously, aban­doned In & Out burgers, and gotten back to burning calo­ries by writing chord-shredding songs. Because second of all, the Deftones are back with a new album and it’s pretty fuckin’ sick.

Dia­mond Eyes imme­di­ately recalls Around the Fur, the band’s breakout record, in its inten­sity and melod­i­cism. Not that the interim albums lacked these qual­i­ties, but for a time the band seemed to be pri­marily con­cerned with proving them­selves as standing apart from the nu-metal/rap-metal main­stream. They did this con­vinc­ingly, but in doing so they sort of played against their strengths at times. White Pony was their OK Com­puter, fid­dling with exper­i­mental elec­tronics and varied song struc­tures at every turn. The self-titled album made a point of saying “hey, we can do heavy too! we’re fuckin’ metal!!” (cf. “Hexa­gram” and “Bloody Cape”), and did it ad nau­seam. Sat­urday Night Wrist mixed the approaches of the pre­vious two albums and man­aged to pro­duce the sin­gu­larly awful “Pink Cell­phone,” inar­guably the worst of the band’s career, along with more than a few pretty damn good songs.

So here we are years later with Dia­mond Eyes. What have we here? Well, only the best album they’ve put out since White Pony. Have a listen to the lead single, “Rocket Skates,” and a look at its stylish if kinda juve­nile video (showing Chino’s slacker beard in full effect):

It’s not their best song, nor the best on the album (I mean, that chorus…), but it’ll give you a taste of the rest that’s in store. Dia­mond Eyes hits stores on May 4^th on Warner Bros., but you can pre-order it now if you feel ever so inclined.