DEFTONES: WHITE PONY

SCORE: 100/100

There's both songs that will make you want to cry and songs that will make you want to mosh - and it's more than just an album. White Pony isn't just another rock album; it's an experience.

It's a project that somehow glistens even brighter than Around the Fur, and it uses more of the melodic sounds found on Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) found on their previous album. This helps to reinvent the sound & style of the band while keeping the structural integrity of their sound very much alive - and it feels like an even more matured and refined project.

White Pony is a deeply serene and atmospheric album with so many feelings within it at once - it's smooth, sexy, dark, and gloomy all at once. It's a heavily moody album; but not in the teenage angst way of many rock albums of the 2000s. It's a smoothly refined and impressively polished album that shines with each note, and every song tells you something different from the last.

Soft one minute and returning to the roots of albums like Around the Fur and Adrenaline the next, this album is everything you could possibly want from a Deftones album. It's an instantly recognizable album that is so much more than just Change (In the House of Flies), and it is an absolute essential within the entire metal genre.

It manages to be an album that is almost hard to review. It's everything that a rock album should strive to be - from the heavy to the soft, this album does it all and packs it in to one delightfully cohesive project. It never feels like it's doing "too much", and it feels entirely effortless. It's a delightful album that is incredibly scenic - yet hard to put into words. White Pony is without a doubt an essential album, and no review could quite do it justice. It's an album that you have to hear to understand - and it makes itself known from the instant it starts.

Deftones managed to soften and sharpen their sound at the same time - showing a shocking and seemingly impossible shift from their previous album, somehow making a project surpassing it in quality when their previous work was already so great. It's an incredibly shocking and impressive album that doesn't let up; and it hooks you even in the moments of calm.

It's much different than Around the Fur, with softer and more emotional compositions rather than the more scream-filled style of their previous work. It feels like a more "adult" project that shows a significant amount of maturity and cohesiveness throughout the entire album. The band clearly works together incredibly well - and each composition is even more impressive than the last. It's a wildly unique album with a sound you won't find anywhere else, and the amount of variety on the album is enough to turn any head.

White Pony oozes class & style; and it's an album you simply can not miss out on.