White Pony was one of the first truly great albums I bought and remains a favourite to this day. My sister introduced me to the Deftones, having bought a copy of Adrenaline on holiday one year, and the release of their third album was big news amongst my friends and I. Hugh and I pre-ordered our limited edition cds (with the bonus track The Boy's Republic and the cd-rom game of Deftones Pac Man) and went to MVC straight after school on the day it came out to pick up our copies. When I was 15 the internet was a very new thing, and if you wanted new music you had to borrow it from your friends or save up and buy the cd yourself; the pool of music available to us was much smaller back then and so we devoured any music we could get our hands on. Naturally then, we played to White Pony to death and listened to those songs in a way I don't have the time to do any more.
It doesn't surprise me that I still love this album, as I remember thinking there was something very special about these songs from the off and somehow both the similarities and the differences to Adrenaline and Around the Fur are what makes it great. Songs like Teenager, Passenger, and Change (in the House of Flies) were so unexpected given the back-catalogue but so brilliantly done you'd be tempted to believe Deftones had never been called a "nu-metal" band. And those songs in turn made the incredibly heavy Elite look out-of-place. There's quite a mix of styles on White Pony and Feiticeira, Knife Prty and Korea couldn't have nailed it better. I think I instantly fell in love with Passenger (Maynard James Keenan's vocal work perfectly with Chino's) and slow build-up/celebration of Pink Maggit, although I could never pick a favourite from these eleven.
A year and a half later I found this double vinyl in Tower Records in Southampton. I'd gone in for a record fair before work, but was early so checked out the high-street record stores beforehand. Tower was pretty expensive in my memory, so £11 for this was definitely a bargain. I didn't have very many records at all by that point, so not only was White Pony one of the first cds I owned, it was also one of the first LPs. It looks great on the gatefold sleeve, and the variation on the cover-art is nice too.
Twelve years later, and I'm still a big fan of the Deftones. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen them but still remember the excitement of the first time - Docklands Arena on the 24th of March 2001 - the first gig I ever went to in London. They had a handful of backdrops that fell as the set went on, and I was so excited when Change started and the previously plain-black backing was lit up with hundreds of little lights that looked like stars. I bought the new album (on cd) on Saturday and I've listened to it a bunch of times today. I've not fallen in love with any of their later albums as much as I did with White Pony. I always kinda hoped they'd write another one like it, but they haven't and now I quite like that; all their albums are great, but White Pony stands out as a classic.
Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Tower Records, Southampton
When: 29/12/01
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
