Deftones’ dedication to expanding the boundaries of metal has set them apart from their contemporaries. Nonetheless, their experimental bent doesn’t dampen their music’s equally potent hit of 1990s nostalgia: their ninth album, Ohms, feels more pre-9/11 America than Fred Durst’s backward caps. The guitars thrash, the drums are punishingly thwacked, and everything is presented with that slick-on-the-ear nu-metal production style once helped the genre become a pop-culture phenom.
Though they’ve lost little intensity since the mid-90s, Ohms finds the Sacramento band grappling with middle age. After opener Genesis floats on to the horizon with tranquility – the warbling synths and slippery guitar lines of the intro feel influenced by David Gilmour – the softness evaporates. Chino Moreno reaches for familiar phoenix imagery (“Climbing out of the ashes”) and defiantly asserts that he will “taste a lifestyle that never gets old”. On the brilliant title track, he looks at time simply as lost ground in the fight against climate change, slipping into a “hopeless sea of regret”. Bookending the album, the two songs offer balanced dispositions: the fight against the passage of time and the lament of time wasted.
Though the writing can be abstract, the outstanding Urantia spells out a break-up in rich detail: the cloak Moreno’s lover left behind, old cigarettes still sitting in an ashtray. There are underwhelming moments – the chugging guitar and indistinct melody of Headless goes nowhere – and Ohms lacks the lateral thinking that distinguished the band’s masterpiece, White Pony. Still, by streamlining their sound, Deftones have made an album that proves that ferocity is not a diminishing resource.
