Deftones

Mixing toxic doses of dark humor, venomous rage and desolate depression, Saturday Night Wrist may leave you a little less sane, but that's exactly the intention. With the help of legendary producer Bob Ezrin, the Deftones experiment with ambient instrumentals ("U,U,D,D,..."), vessel-bursting riffs ("Rats!Rats!Rats!") and even trip-hop beats ("Pink Cellphone"). Suitably released on Halloween, the album features the skewed pipes of Chino Moreno, resonating with such eerie authenticity the singer could be eternally trapped in the depths of a haunted cellar and we'd never know it.

This Cali quintet was the artiest of the new-metal bands, honing a savage and spaced-out
guitar-and-keyboard attack that got dense as hell on 2003's Deftones. Saturday Night Wrist
is slightly cleaned-up, but it's as dark as the Deftones have ever gotten, with sludgy
stoner-rock bumping against prog-metal chops and scorched-earth atmospherics. It's a
weird blend of viscerally shaking (hopped-up slashers like "The Earth"), artfully... More >