Deftones

I’ve always seen the Deftones plopped onto the Nü-Metal pile, so I wasn’t prepared for this CD to be good. I was a little misled—this is an enormous record. It’s not enormous just because the CD has extended videos and home movies of the band and an impressive 20-page color booklet (with a beautiful cover): The sound is enormous. Noisy and pretty would be the short description. But, within the generalization is a breadth of approaches that the Sacramento band explores and tweaks from track to track (even within tracks). Unyielding scream-fests slide into lush shoe-gazer lopers that would make The Smashing Pumpkins proud. The guitar sound often slips into over-processed metal, but occasionally there’s promise as the band spreads out into more creative directions to find the noise.