Deftones - White Pony (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Oooh, this is going to be a long one. I've been actively avoiding starting this blog post.

Luckily I've mostly calmed down now and I think I can finally listen to Black Stallion without the rage I had the first time I heard it. In fact, if you skip the terrible, tossed-off, barely 2-minute-long "remix" of Feiticeira, it's not a bad album. Now, that's not the praise it could be - "not bad" is a pretty low bar, especially given the source material here. There's a fair amount to unpack here, and I'm still not sure where to start.

Let's go back to the beginning. When Deftones started talking about the 20th anniversary of White Pony, there was talk of "Black Stallion", a plan they always had to get people to remix the album - not a revolutionary idea, but certainly not one that many metal bands could have pulled off in 2000, and still quite interesting in 2020. When the re-release got announced, I got very excited, even though few of the remixers meant anything to me (five of the eleven were names I knew, or had at least heard of). There were a few options, all very expensive - for £55 you could get the 4LP version, or for double that you could get the 4LP version with the albums on cd too, and a fancy book. It'd just been my birthday, and between my parents and my in-laws I had precisely £110 in birthday money (partly in the form of a Norman Records voucher). Despite knowing that I didn't need to go for the more expensive version, I went for it anyway. Hilariously, I remember thinking "if Black Stallion is awesome, I'll be pleased to have mp3s of it"; little did I know. 

At some point towards the tail end of 2020 Black Stallion was released on streaming services (I know this because my desk was in the sitting room, but it hadn't got so cold that I moved it nearer to the radiator - during a monotonous pandemic, the various locations of my desk are really the only way I can distinguish within the passage of time). I frantically dug out my long-forgotten Spotify password and gave it a listen. My heart sank almost instantly. What the fuck was that remix of Feiticeira? How could DJ Shadow not focus the entire remix of Digital Bath around Chino's "I feel like moooore", instead of letting it drift off into a blur of noises? Even Robert Smith's remix of Teenager was thoroughly underwhelming. The only remix that I didn't hate on first listen was Mike Shinoda's remix of Passenger - I read some comments about the album on the internet afterwards (a dangerous thing to do, and not recommended in general) mostly to see if I wasn't the only one who hated it. One person made the interesting comment that the mixers didn't "respect" the band or the material enough to do a good job, and I see what they mean. Mike Shinoda is the exception to that rule - I suspect he is the only one who looks up to the Deftones (Robert Smith is a fan, but the admiration goes the other way there). Then I read a review where someone said that remix was the low-point of the album. I think I agree with the offended metalhead more than the artsy-reviewer though.

I'm now going to dedicate a whole paragraph to ripping into the remix of Feiticeira, so if you've already had enough of my rage about that particular song, you can probably skip this one. If you've not heard the remix, it starts off with a few lines of the original guitar, before falling away to something that barely resembles anything from the original song. One or two of Chino's lines are somewhere in the background, and the whole finishes before it even really starts. Feiticeira is one of the greatest openings to an album ever, and is a huge song. How Clams Casino thought they could spin it into a half-baked interlude I don't know; how it got onto the album is a bigger mystery. The "respect" comment from before feels particularly apt here - how could anyone who actually enjoys that song, that album and the importance it plays turn in something so half-hearted? It's making me angry all over again. Utter garbage. I'm nearly tempted to buy that over-priced Record Store Day 12" just to have a better remix of Feiticeira (the b-side), and I've not even heard that one. But I can't see how it could be any worse.

But, if you just skip that song (in what world do you "just skip" Feiticeira? Argh!) then there's less to get angry about. Once I realised that was the solution, I have played Black Stallion a few more times. I couldn't say I've enjoyed it - it's not a patch on White Pony - but I've seen some of the appeal. In fact, in places it becomes an album you could play in polite company and people might enjoy (hang on, I'm trying to say the positive is that they've turned one of the greatest albums of all time into generic background music? What have I become?). The exception to that of course being Blanck Mass's remix of Elite, which somehow manages to be even heavier. I almost wish they'd gone the other way - I'd love to hear a non-brutal version of that song. A few of the songs really have few redeeming features - I'd be hard pushed to tell you anything about the remixes of Korea and Change (in the House of Flies) and I'm literally listening to the second one right now. It feels like a fucking relief when Squarepusher doesn't do away with the guitars in Pink Maggit - I'm always desperate to hear a guitar ever since they disappeared in Feiticeira (of course, he punishes us by distorting Chino for no reason other than he had to do something to get his fee I guess).

So those are my thoughts on Black Stallion. I keep thinking back to when it announced and how naïve I was to have high hopes about it, which is ridiculous because it was a year ago, not something that happened in my youth. I should have known I'd hate a remix album, I hate almost all remixes of rock music. With very few exceptions, they're all terrible. I guess that remix album of Explosions in the Sky's All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was good, but I feel like the remixers were peers, rather than intentionally different. Why did I think this was going to be good? Maybe because the original album was so great, I figured how could anyone make it sound bad. Well, now I know.

I never thought I'd be writing about the 20th anniversary version of White Pony and have had such bad things to say, let alone to have written six paragraphs without talking much about the eleven songs that changed my life back in the year 2000. As written about on here many years ago, I have an original pressing of White Pony on vinyl, so I didn't need to buy this to have a copy of the album I love so much on vinyl. I love that album, I think I always will. It was special, unique and the peak of so many things. I still love Deftones, but I don't think I've loved them more than when this album came out. It felt important and we were lucky enough to be right there at the right time to watch it unfold.

So, original White Pony and dubious-at-best Black Stallion aside, what else is there to say? Well, still more! For one, there's amazingly little here for a 20th anniversary version. For the prices they're charging, you'd want more for sure - would it have killed them to throw in The Boy's Republic from the limited edition cd? They could even have put the Back to School EP on vinyl and that would have been exciting (although I appreciate their animosity to that particular release). Demos, live songs, literally any other material would have been welcome. In all the various versions of this release, you just got the same 22 songs. I can't believe there aren't fascinating curios from the era that fans would have lapped up (and all of them would have been better than Black Stallion). The deluxe edition includes a book with some notes from the band about the songs (well, one comment per song. Again, more would've been nice) and a lot of photos. 

One thing that particularly bugs me about this release is that the regular 4LP version looks so much better than this one. I saw it in a shop the other day and thought "I wish I'd bought that one instead" (regardless of the price and content). The black and white art looks so much cooler than the silver and white here - it's really bold and impressive. I ordered this long before images of each one were available, so I wasn't to know. I don't like the idea of "regret" in general, and I certainly don't regret buying this one, but in hindsight I kinda wish I'd spent my money differently - I have White Pony on vinyl, so I could've just bought the cd version to hear Black Stallion; if I'd loved Black Stallion (ha!) I could've then bought the 4LP and still have money to spare. Oh well, you live and you learn.

Format: 4x12", book, picture, picture sleeves

Tracks: 22

Cost: £110.99 new

Bought: Norman Records website

When: 26/02/21

Colour: Black

Etching: etching on side H

mp3s: cds

Deftones - Adrenaline

This is where it all began - the first Deftones record I heard. You can't ask for a better introduction than that chugging riff on Bored, the way it changes down perfectly for the chorus, and Chino's screams of the simple sentiment "I get bored". I've sung this song to myself a million times and I can hold that note a fraction of the the amount of time Chino can.

I've told this story a bunch of times before, so I'll keep it short: when my sister and I were just getting into music, we'd been on holiday with my parents to America and discovered the wonder of cheap music and a favourable exchange rate. She bought six cds, all of which I eventually bought from her - three Silverchair albums, two Marilyn Manson albums and Adrenaline by Deftones. She was big into Manson at the time, and one of her friends had got her into Silverchair, particularly Neon Ballroom. Quite how Deftones fit into this I don't know - possibly she'd heard one of the two big singles from Around the Fur. For whatever reason she bought Adrenaline, and at some point in the trip, I popped the cd into her Walkman and gave it a listen. Like I said, what an introduction I had. I can remember it quite lividly; it was an important moment.

That was just over 20 years ago, but it was the beginning of a lot of things. The following summer Deftones released White Pony and I rushed out to buy a copy the day it came out (I'd pre-ordered the limited edition with the bonus track). I've bought every Deftones album the week it's come out since and I suspect I'll continue to do so as long as they put them out.

You can't fault Adrenaline as a debut album. As a band they upped their game a huge amount for Around the Fur in terms of writing huge singles, and then White Pony was just another level entirely. Remove those comparison points and you still have a great album - Bored, Lifter (with it's outro of "A part of me gets sick / A part of me gets sore"), every single moment of 7 Words (the first time I saw Deftones they broke into Weezer's Say it Ain't So in the break, which was brilliant), Birthmark and the closing duo of Fireal / Fist are all incredible. Fist was particularly exciting because it was so far from the sound they'd established over the previous 40 minutes - almost post-rock - but is criminally missing from the vinyl pressing.

Right now I'm playing this to my three-week-old daughter (her third album so far). I'm not convinced she's getting as much from it as I did on that first listen, but she's much younger than I was when I first heard it.

Format: 12", insert (not photographed)
Tracks: 11
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Bear Tree Records website
When: 09/04/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Deftones - Around the Fur

I've been gradually buying the Deftones back-catalogue on vinyl. A couple of years ago they all became very readily available, which took away the pressure to buy everything straight away. I've had White Pony on vinyl since it came out and I'd always thought it'd be nice for it to sit there amongst their many other excellent albums, something that is now nearly the case.

Fopp in Oxford has had them all in pretty much since they opened, so every now and again I buy one. Every time I get served by the same member of staff and each time we have the same conversation about Deftones - it's a perfectly nice conversation, and I'm all for conversations with people who work in record shops, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to take as much interest as I did the first time. She saw them at Reading, Chino is awesome, the White Pony is an incredible record. Luckily, I can chat happily about Deftones for hours - I also think Chino is a great frontman and I have endless amounts of time for White Pony. My main worry is that one of these days she'll realise that this isn't the first Deftones album she's sold me, that I've been having the same conversation back each time and that I'm odd for not mentioning that we've already had that conversation. Two albums to go, it might not happen.

Anyway, recently I bought Around the Fur, Deftones' second album. When I got into them they'd only released this and Adrenaline, and I'd started with Adrenaline. I paid a surprisingly pricey £9 for a second hand copy of this album on cd at a record fair in 2001, just over a year after White Pony had come out. I'd heard the album a bunch of times beforehand, but was pleased to finally have my own copy. The songs with brackets in the titles, My Own Summer (Shove It) and Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) had been on heavy rotation on MTV so I was even more familiar with those two, here opening up each side of the vinyl. The album came out twenty years ago, and I've been listening to it for most of those; in particular I've heard those two singles an unfathomably large of times and they still sound great. Both are instantly recognisable from the off and have sent a shiver down my spine each time I've heard those first few notes live. The whole album makes me wish I was still young and fit enough to throw myself around the way Chino does.

It's hard to talk about the other highlights of the album because there aren't any songs that I don't think are great. That said, Lhabia, Around the Fur, Lotion and Headup are all incredible. Dai the Flu is the most White Pony-esque song on the record and wouldn't have sounded too out of place on that record. Headup was, of course, the song that introduced us to Max Cavalera and Soulfly (being a few years too young for Sepultura's peak), which isn't particularly worth noting; it is a great song though. MX is a fun closer to the album with a strong riff. The cd version is actually a bit ruined by the long wait in silence for the bonus track Damone, one I can’t remember too well off the top of my head. I should make an effort to listen to it soon.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £16 new
Bought: Fopp, Oxford
When: 10/01/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Deftones - Deftones

Deftones released their fourth album in my last year of college. I'd been a fan for a few years and had already found myself with six different versions of their incredible third album, White Pony (the limited edition red and black versions, the US reissue with the large pony on the cover, the original, a promo and the double LP); suffice to say, I was very excited for the self-titled follow-up.

The week beforehand I'd rushed into town to buy the Minerva single (on cd and 7") and did the same the following week for the album. I had some free periods on Mondays, so took the bus back home, played the album very loudly and returned to college after lunch. They were an important band to me and still are now, which is one of the things I love them for the most.

Deftones is a brilliantly heavy record - I still remember being pummelled by it on that first listen. In hindsight, I love that it wasn't like White Pony even if at the the time I kinda wished it was. The singles Hexagram and Minerva are both huge. Minerva had been plastered across MTV that early-summer and walks a thin line being being a fairly poppy single but also having Stephen Carpenter's guitar beating you down. It's stood the test of time remarkably well. When Girls Telephone Boys is a highlight too - it has obvious parallels to Elite but is more listenable - and Bloody Cape could easily have been a single with that chorus. Lucky You should have come as more as a surprise as a odd-ball song on that first listen, but I'd been reading the sleeve notes and could tell it was going to be more experimental by the additional writing credit to DJ Crook. I've since learnt my lesson to not read the details in advance lest I spoil the surprise. Overall, it lacks the epics that they'd begun writing on White Pony, but is an album of huge songs, which is all anyone really wants.

Recently, their back-catalogue has become quite readily available on vinyl, so it seems rude to not have the other LPs sit alongside White Pony in my collection. However, I've been fairly rubbish at actually buying them - the fact that they're always in record shops takes away the fun a bit and there's usually more urgent purchases to make. However, I have bought a few and will round out the collection in due time.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Fopp Oxford
When: 07/07/17
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Deftones - B-Sides & Rarities

Like, I suspect, a lot of people who bought this Record Store day release, I've had this album on cd for years. It came out when I was living in Australia and I only discovered that it had been released because I stumbled across a copy in the excellent Land Speed Records in Canberra. I didn't buy a copy until sometime later when I was in Fopp in Brighton (for a bargain £5).

Of course I also have a copy of the covers album that Deftones released for RSD in 2012, and the two album share a large overlap: Savoury (Jawbox cover), Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover), No Ordinary Love (Sade cover featuring Jonah Matranga providing some excellent vocals), If Only Tonight We Could Sleep (The Cure cover), Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths cover) and The Chauffeur (Duran Duran cover recorded in 1994 but also made it onto the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack ten years later) all appear on Covers. Conversely there are two covers - Wax and Wane (Cocteau Twins cover) and Sinatra (Helmet cover on the b-side to to Minerva) - that are on here but not on Covers. The fact that neither represent a complete collection of either covers or b-sides is strange.

There are some nice acoustic versions (including the excellent acoustic version of Be Quiet and Drive from the single, again featuring Jonah on vocals) and a couple of rarities in the form of Crenshaw Punch / I'll Throw Rocks at You and Black Moon featuring B-Real from Cypress Hill. There were a few nice treats to be found in the package too - the d-side is etched with the band name twice (although I feel they missed a trick by not etching the flower that graces the label and cd on so many of their releases - perhaps it would be too difficult to do well). Not only that, but they've also thrown in the dvd that came with the original cd release, which was totally unexpected. The dvd has all the band's videos until 2005. I watched it back in 2006 but not more recently. I probably should. A lot of their videos were plastered over MTV2 for years, but I remember enjoying some of the videos that weren't so over-played. As a teenager I remember thinking how fucking cool those guys were in the video to My Own Summer (Shove It).

I feel like this year RSD has gone to some effort to up their game in the releases; compare this to Covers from 2012 and you can see the difference - coloured and etched vinyl, inserts, dvds vs a single LP of almost entirely re-released covers with a simple sleeve. I, for one, am glad of it.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert, dvd
Tracks: 14
Cost: £26 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Gold
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Deftones - Live: Volume 1 - Selections from Adrenaline

So Saturday was Record Store Day 2013 and, as ever, I was up outside Banquet Records very early. I like Record Store Day a lot - it's the one thing I get to be obsessive about (I love seeing queues outside shops knowing there's still small handful of people getting excited over about their particular niche), every year I have nice conversations about music with strangers in the queue and the atmosphere is always lovely. This year I arrived at Banquet 45 minutes earlier than last year but was stood a good few meters further back; the popularity is growing but that's no wonder given the ever-increasing number of exclusive releases.

Anyway, one of the highlights for me was this Deftones record. I'd heard about the plan to release seven Deftones RSD records featuring some live cuts from each album before the full list was announced and I thought it was pretty cool. The rest of the list appeared and there were some other interesting releases but the Deftones one remained one of my top priorities on Saturday (I popped into Banquet again on Sunday and there were still copies there, but the early start was worth it to (almost) guarantee a copy).

There may only be four songs, but they're great to hear. I was initially worried that the recordings of Teething and Nosebleed would be the same as on the Back to School EP but luckily they're separated by five years. The quality is good (except for the start of Minus Blindfold where the sound wavers a little) and the sleeve looks way nicer in real life than I expected. Most of all, it's great to go back in time and hear Chi play bass again. I was saddened by the news of his passing, especially because I thought he was getting better. I suppose I always thought I'd see him on stage again, but now I'll have to make do with these recording instead. One other thing that's particularly nice about this record is at the start of Teething when Chino says "if you never heard of this band right here, we're called Deftones from California" and you're reminded that Deftones weren't always a massive band and the crazy idea that people hadn't heard of them. It's like in Grosse Point Blank where John Cusack's assistant says "I just find it amusing that you came from somewhere". Teething and Engine No. 9 are my favourites at the moment.

Of course it wouldn't be a Record Store Day post without a slight moan about prices. When this appeared on Banquet's site it was listed as a tenner - "what a bargain" I thought. Then Sister Ray put out their price list and had it at £32 which I assumed must have been a mistake. Spillers' list later also had it nearer £30 and I began to panic - maybe Banquet got it wrong and this record really was going for £30! Then their price jumped up £27 before falling back down to a slightly more reasonable, but still pretty expensive £20. Somebody is almost certainly making a killing out of this and I doubt it's Banquet or the Deftones. Having bought this one I'm pretty much tied into buying the next six, and if they think they're getting £140 out of me for what will probably be about 28 songs, well, they're probably right. I'm a sucker I know. The spine has seven little circles, one for each record, and they are going to look lovely on my shelf when they're all out.


Format: 12"
Tracks: 4
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 20/04/13
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Deftones - Minerva

I saw Deftones on Wednesday and they were ace, as they always are. I've lost count how many times I've seen them play now (in Brixton Academy alone!) and I love that I get to see one of my favourite bands so often. I'll save my gripes about the sound in the Academy for another time, because it's much more fun to write about how great Deftones are. On top of that, I get the impression they're really nice guys; I'd love to sit down and chat about metal with Stephen and convince Sergio that Quicksand should play the UK again. They could invite Jonah too, because they're all good friends and Jonah's a nice guy. But that strange fantasy aside, I should write a little about this record. For some lengthier thoughts about the band, there's a post I wrote about the White Pony double vinyl here.

I picked up the Minerva 7" (and the cd) the morning the single came out shortly before the end of college and my A-level exams. A week later the self-titled album came out and I eagerly picked up that too. I remember having a few free periods on a Monday afternoon, so I went home, played the album very loudly and returned to college for my later classes. I enjoyed it but over the years it hasn't stood up against White Pony.

I'm pretty sure the video for Minerva had been on heavy rotation for weeks on MTV so I already knew it well. It was an instant classic Deftones song - the gentle start into the crushing guitars and Chino's floating vocal. The b-side, Sinatra, is a Helmet cover that made it onto the B-Sides and Rarities album. Helmet are a band I simply haven't got round to getting into yet. I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy them simply based on the bands who consider them an influence. Maybe that can be a goal for the year: get into Helmet. Anyway, it's a nice song (a great bass line and done in Deftones heavy-yet-quiet style), but doesn't make the 7" an essential purchase. Still, for £1 you can hardly complain - 2003 was definitely in that golden era when 7"s were a great bargain.


Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Winchester
When: 12/05/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Deftones - White Pony

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

Deftones - Covers

This is the first of last year's Record Store Day haul, appropriately timed since tomorrow is Record Store Day! Much like last year, I've spend the last few weeks lusting over the list of over-priced re-releases and occasional interesting records. That's pretty much what happened last year with this one, amongst others. Needless to say I was outside Banquet before 7, sat in the queue much further back than I expected (number 57 I think), cold, reading a shitty book, waiting to go in. The guys around me were chatty enough, so it was far from terrible. I like Record Store Day, despite it basically being the record companies abusing the fact that I love spending money on limited edition vinyl and going to stupid lengths to do so. It takes a lot to get me out of bed and sat on a road in Kingston before sunrise. I think I love it because I love Banquet Records, and I loved Spillers Records, and the first year I heard of RSD when I happened to be visiting Colorado, I loved Bart's CD Cellar and Albums on the Hill. I just like record shopping, if there's a day of the year when its considered acceptable to spend hundreds on vinyl on a Saturday morning then I'm all for it.

All that said, I do wish the records were better.

Some of the vinyl that appears on that expensive morning each April is genuinely awesome. Others however are just the record company breaking my balls. This is basically one of them. I doubt the Deftones even know this record came out (which is neither a comment on the amount of weed they smoke nor the coma Chi is recovering from). The cover of "Drive" is, to my best knowledge, new. The others have all appeared in various forms before. I can't be doing with iTunes, so it's nice to have the songs that were bonus tracks to Diamond Eyes (especially the Drive Like Jehu cover). Otherwise, the release seems distinctly half-hearted. This record cost me £20, which places it firmly in the more expensive end of my record collection. It has no insert, gatefold sleeve, artwork isn't very inspiring, coloured vinyl or mp3s (I'm finally making a digital copy as I write this, although they always sound a bit shit). They've really made no effort to make me buy it at all, other than only pressing 5,000 copies worldwide, which is quite a lot really. Of course there was never any doubt I was going to buy it.

Musically its great. Of course it is. I've grown up listening to the Deftones and to say that most of the bands I listened to when I was 15 are, in hindsight, shit is quite the understatement. Deftones have always been there to remind me that 15-year-old me had some sense. I've always imagined them to have a pretty eclectic record collection, and the choice of songs here back that up. I could live without The Smiths cover, they do nothing for me. Between the Deftones and Jonah Matranga covers of Jawbox, I eventually picked up their album a few years back (but that should be credited to the B-Sides and Rarities cd rather than this record). All in all, not much new, but an enjoyable record to play.

All these rants aside, I will be outside Banquet even earlier this year (each year the queue gets longer, so I have to be there sooner). Luckily its now only a short walk from my house. Still, not looking forward to setting my alarm for 4am.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 11
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Banquet
When: 16/04/11
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no