Some of them actually dressed up like clowns. Of course, bands like Deftones and their ilk already had enough trouble being taken seriously in the critical sphere - guys with goatees and dreads playing pointy guitars and turntables, hailing from cities like Bakersfield, Sacramento, Des Moines, and Jacksonville that were punchlines for New York and Los Angeles. It’s enough goodwill to make up for a couple of bum notes - the pandemic-induced shutdown of their planned tour with French metal giants Gojira and post-internet provocateur Poppy, as well as guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s rather, um, tone-deaf views on COVID-19 (amongst other things).Ģ5 years after their debut Adrenaline, it’s worth taking a step back and appreciating how all of the above came from a band that spent even their commercial heyday getting browbeaten by a label that expected them to be Limp Bizkit or Papa Roach. In two weeks, the long-rumored Black Stallion finally sees the light of day, a full-on White Pony remix album featuring DJ Shadow, Mike Shinoda, Squarepusher, Clams Casino, Purity Ring, and Robert freaking Smith himself. Their ninth studio album Ohms arrived in September to the most thunderously positive reviews of their entire career, and it has already topped Revolver’s Best Albums list of 2020.

We would have likely also seen the third iteration of Dia De Los Deftones, the daylong San Diego festival whose curators’ massive reach previously allowed sensible lineups to be created out of artists ranging from Rocket From the Crypt, Vein, Hum, Future, Chvrches, Doja Cat, JPEGMAFIA, and Megan Thee Stallion.īut instead of simply taking a victory lap, Deftones went on another title run. May would have brought the 20th-anniversary celebration of White Pony, their game-changing masterpiece of progressive, shoegaze, and trip-hop-inflected metal that bore an obvious imprint on two of the first quarter’s most acclaimed rock albums, Higher Power’s 27 Miles Underwater and Loathe’s I Let It In And It Took Everything. To truly appreciate Deftones’ legendary status in 2020, consider that they would’ve had an incredible year even if they released no new music at all.

Deftones albums ranked reddit