Deftones have announced a new European/UK tour for April 2017. Full details are not yet revealed, but we havethe full schedule so far below.Continue reading
One of the most anticipated albums of 2016 is here with Deftones’ long awaited eighth album, Gore (Reprise). While much has been made in the press by the band themselves of the growing division of styles and tastes between core members Chino Moreno and Stephen Carpenter, the reality is the band has always thrived on challenging themselves musically. Continuing the arc the band started with 2010’s Diamond Eyes and followed to a logical next step with 2012’s Koi No Yokan (both Reprise), musically they continue to flow back in more of the aggro-heaviness that made them shine early in their career. Meanwhile crafting sweet, dreamy shoe-gaze inspired jams takes equal footing without giving any ground. The blend of the two styles is magical most of the time. If there is any disharmony in the ranks, it doesn’t show in these beautifully crafted tracks. In fact, this is music that screams out “let’s get making with the love! Oooh yeah!”
Lead off track ‘Prayers/Triangles’ could be straight off of the White Pony album. The track has a persistent beat and is not overly heavy, but works well. A hypnotic, multi-layered vocal track from Moreno hits home, as few vocalists in modern music can make you feel what he wants you to in an instant. Considering his penchant for obtuse and poetic lyrics, this is quite a feat.
Much heavier and slower, ‘Acid Hologram’ creeps in with massive riffs and subtle melodies. Turntablist/programmer Frank Delgado adds a lot of sonic heft here as well. When the song pivots toward the end and steps up the sonic urgency, it is one of the best moments on Gore.
‘Doomed User’ is another top track out of the gate. Chopping riffs and that patented super-tight Abe Cunningham beat bring it home. I can’t wait to hear this one performed live. Similarly ‘Geometric Headress’ kicks in with a tribal beat, but has a very different feel by the end, almost a proggy, Tool-flavored affair track Chino’s lovely crooning coming in between periods of yelps of dismay.
‘Hearts/Wires’ finds them exploring their Joy Division jones before the epic chorus kicks in. In terms of dynamic interplay and lyrics, this is easily the best track on Gore.
One standout thing about the last few Deftones releases are the contributions of bassist Sergio Vega. Long past is the time when he was standing in for the late Chi Cheng, and is now a full-fledged, weight-bearing member. Cheng himself was a dynamic writing force on early Deftones albums. Vega has more than picked up that mantle now. Beyond putting his unique stamp on the songs, Vega pushes and pulls the tracks as well now too.
Tracks like ‘Pittura Infamante’ and ‘Xenon’ will call to mind the Around the Fur days of the band, which was the moment they killed off the nu-metal of their youth and became something much more deep and interesting as a band.
If this band made power-ballads in the traditional sense, ‘L(Mirl)’ would be the closest thing to one. Not at all typical, but an easy to digest track that grooves along. Switching it up, the title track comes next and it is like a DNA strand of the bands history. A little metal, a little gaze, and a lot of brilliant.
‘Phantom Bride’ is another standout deep cut. It’s as gorgeous as it is harrowing on the senses. It’s the most “Chino sounding” track here, but isn’t so way out that it sounds out of place. It also has a stellar guest performance from Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains adding some slick lead guitar and his trademark harmonized licks. I kind of wished the ending riff of the track would have gone on for a while longer, but it’s pretty satisfying still. ‘Rubicon’ is the album closer, but it has the energy of an opening track. A soaring, emotive song full of chaos and sadness all at once.
The hallmark of all the great bands is they continue to grow gradually across many albums and ages, without over-shooting when it comes to experimentation. This band remains unique in that they always sound like themselves, even when incorporating new influences and themes. Deftones remain the same, but spreading outward like a glacier. Solitary, beautiful, cold, and unstoppable.
9.0/10
KEITH CHACHKES
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Deftones played a free show on March 17th at South By Southwest, and performed a bit of Hip-Hop classic ‘My Mind’s Playing Tricks On Me’ by classic Gangsta Rap legends Geto Boys. Rapper Bushwick Bill of the band joined Deftones on stage for the track, which happened as an intro to ‘Digital Bath’. You can see a video of the track at this link or below:
Deftones kicked of their tour with their set at SBSW. Their new album Gore releases April 8th from Warner Brothers Records. They recently released a second single, the very heavy ‘Doomed User’.
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Deftones, whose new album Gore arrives April 8th (Warner Brothers), have announced more tour dates to their upcoming run of the USA engagements this spring . Starting May 8th near Charlotte, NC, this second leg of 14 dates will end May 28th gig in El Paso, TX. Ticket pre-sales begin starting Mar 4th at the Deftones’ official site. These dates cover special events, such as MusInk, Spin Magazine’s South By Southwest (SXSW) showcase, and festivals such as Carolina Rebellion, The Shakey Knees Fest, and Rock on The Range.
Deftones Tour Dates
Mar 05: Musink Festival – Costa Mesa, CA
Mar 16: Never Say Never Festival – Mission, TX
Mar 18: SPIN Party at Stubb’s – Austin, TX
Mar 19: Lonestar Events Center – San Antonio, TX
Mar 20: South Side Ballroom – Dallas, TX
Mar 22: Revention Music Center – Houston, TX
Mar 24: Lonestar Pavilion – Lubbock, TX
May 08: Carolina Rebellion – Concord, NC
May 10: Minglewood Hall – Memphis, TN
May 11: Ryman Auditorium – Nashville, TN
May 13: Pompano Beach Amphitheatre – Pompano Beach, FL
May 14: House of Blues – Lake Buena Vista, FL
May 15: Shaky Knees Festival – Atlanta, GA
May 17: St. Augustine Amphitheatre – St. Augustine, FL
May 18: Orpheum Theatre – New Orleans, LA
May 20: Uptown Theatre – Kansas City, MO
May 21: KPNT Pointfest – Maryland Heights, MO
May 22: Rock on the Range – Columbus, OH
May 24: The District – Sioux Falls, SD
May 25: Cotillion Ballroom – Wichita, KS
May 26: Criterion Theater – Oklahoma City, OK
May 28: Neon Desert Festival – El Paso, TX
Pre-orders are live for Gore now:
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Deftones are streaming their new single in full, after teasing a snippet yesterday. The track premiered by Zane Lowe on his Beats1 Radio show comes off of their upcoming album Gore, due our on April 8th from Warner Brothers Records. You can hear the track at this link on iTunes/Apple Music or below:
To celebrate 20 years of nastiness, Belgian death metallers Aborted have released a five track EP. Termination Redux (Century Media) features three new songs and a re-recording of the band’s 2001 song ‘The Holocaust Incarnate’ from the band’s Engineering The Dead (Listenable Records) record.
Grinding death metal has always been Aborted’s speciality, and this is a short, sharp, shock of crushingly relentless filth. Technical chainsaw riffs, machine gun drumming and larynx-bleeding vocals fill every track. There’s no signs of slowing down or – god forbid – mellowing out, and the three new tracks promise to make the band’s upcoming album a potential highlight of 2016.
For completest, the rerecording of ‘The Holocaust Incarnate’ retains its original buzzsaw qualities, but is given an added crispness to its sound. The band haven’t changed a whole lot over the years, and the fact that a song over a decade old reinforces the idea that the band have always been about refining, rather than radically changing their sound.
In fifteen minutes, Termination Redux demonstrates pretty perfectly what Aborted are all about; brutal, uncompromising death metal. Happy Anniversary.
8.0/10
DAN SWINHOE
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“Not another Swedish death metal band!” I hear you cry. Surely a scene stuffed to the gills with those who worship at the putrid altars of Dismember and Entombed doesn’t need another body to distract attention and replicate clichés? Well you’d be dead wrong of course. Newbies Cut Up have actually been round the block several times, via the local graveyard and abattoir of course, in their previous incarnation as gore merchants Vomitory, who made a lot of noise in their lengthy career but won few hearts and minds. Do these seasoned veterans still have the bit between their teeth?
The answer is a resounding yes. Cut Up doesn’t so much have the bit between their gnashers as the leg of a freshly slain corpse. Debut album Forensic Nightmares (Metal Blade) is a full-blooded beast of a death metal album that while resolutely old-school in its approach, is possessed of its own, fierce identity and not interested in merely copying the greats of the genre.
No, Cut Up wants to brutally violate your eardrums with a barrage of lethal riffs, thick, serpentine grooves and some truly nasty guttural vocals. Every track served up here is cooked to bloody perfection, from the sickening gut-punch of brief opening tracks ‘Enter Hell’ and ‘Burial Time’ to the lurching filth of ‘Order of the Chainsaw’ and the raging violence of the title track.
The lyrics may deal with the usual blood n’ guts but what do you expect from a band called Cut Up? However, the real surprise is the thick, meaty production that truly gives each instrument some serious heft with the drums in particular sounding utterly devastating. So if the last Bloodbath album left you cold, check out Cut Up’s brand of shit-hot death metal and marvel at how sometimes shedding your skin and being reborn (in blasphemy, of course) is the best way to go.
8.0/10
JAMES CONWAY
Although they released one of the first US death metal albums with 1987’s Season of the Dead (New Renaissance), Ohio natives Necrophagia have never been regarded as pioneers of the genre, instead more of a tired old sideshow masquerading under the banner of a ‘cult band.’ Despite the patronage of Phil Anselmo and the dogged nature of mainman Killjoy, Necrophagia just quite simply aren’t worthy of much attention when one considers how fertile the US scene currently is. It’s a problem they do little to address on seventh full-length WhiteWorm Cathedral (Season of Mist).
If mid-paced, plodding death metal that never even hints at stepping out of its comfort zone is your thing, then WhiteWorm Cathedral may hold some appeal. With its frequent use of horror movie samples, big chugging riffs and rasped vocals depicting morbid tales of violence, the supernatural and gore, Necrophagia have always played to the choir and over the course of 50 minutes they carry on the formula that is all they know to an almost religious level of conformity. Of course, the same accusation could be levelled at all manner of bands from AC/DC to Eyehategod, but the problem here is that most songs will have you reaching for the skip button and wondering when things are going to rise above the mundane. Unfortunately that moment never comes.
While the hefty chugging and ghostly keyboards of ‘Rat Witch’ may march onwards like a sinister George Romero zombie and the snaking riffs of ‘Angel Blake’ at least possesses a hook, the vast majority of WhiteWorm Cathedral is just too dull and generic to make any kind of lasting impression. Meat and potatoes without the gravy. Or should that be fleshy chunks without the blood?
Either way, this is one corpse that just needs to lie silent.
4.0/10
JAMES CONWAY
There can’t be many people who don’t agree with the assertion that a band name is important. Our collective musical history is littered with band names that are brilliantly evocative (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Emperor) as well as those where, if truth be known, they didn’t really try at all: Panic! At the Disco, Texas is the Reason, Cute is What We Aim For [and my personal favourite We Butter The Bread With Butter – Reviews Ed] all need to see me after school for a chat.
Of late, band names tend to give you an almost intuitive sense of what the music is going to sound like, and, let’s be fair, you know already that Sodomized Cadaver are going to be a death metal band, don’t you? Yes, you do and yes, they are. Sodomized Cadaver hail from Ebbw Vale in the South Wales valleys. Ebbw Vale is probably best known for two things – its steel and mining heritage and a tough and uncompromising rugby union team (famously known as The Steelmen after the town’s industrial history). Ebbw Vale is but one of many South Wales valleys towns where there often isn’t a lot to do, so forming a band can be a creative and positive outlet for many. What Messrs Gavin Davies and Raymond Packer have created with this five track EP is straight out of the death metal box, albeit one dripping in gore and generally unpleasant themes.
Calling your EP after a sexual predilection that fantasises you or your partner being eaten alive gives you a sense on where these valley boys are coming from and with song titles like ‘Cannibal Butcher’, ‘Torture’, and ‘Weapons of Mass Decomposition’ there might not be much room for creative manoeuvring, but at least you know where you stand and they know, rather all too well, what gets their audience salivating.
With influences that range across the often diverse palette of extreme music, there’s plenty of Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse dripping through the grooves as well as bits of Bolt Thrower and The Black Dahlia Murder. Someone is clearly in awe of Bill Steer’s guitar playing on Carcass records, too.
At one level you could be critical at the cartoon like imagery conjured up by Vorarephilia (SWEM) and wonder whether it is all a bit juvenile – we have been there and done this all before. However, another part of me wants to give these boys the benefit of the doubt as I sense a pretty black sense of humour running through all of this. For all the bludgeon and dismemberment, under all that flesh, gore and mutilated body parts I can’t shake the sense that there’s also a glint in their collective eye, a sense that they also know this is not for real and we should just go with the energetic and pulverizing flow that they have created. I bet they love their mums, too.
Visceral and intense, as these things need to be.
7.0/10
MAT DAVIES
Over the years of listening to death metal, I have yet to be let down by any release by Cannibal Corpse. Arguably the biggest death metal band today, and after twelve previous releases, I wondered how much longer until a lackluster album would be released. Well, I have bad news. The streak continues! The thirteenth release from these titans, A Skeletal Domain (Metal Blade), has brought more violent, gory goodness that only Cannibal Corpse can create. However, what made this album stick out and not sound like “just another Cannibal Corpse album” was the sheer evil and eerie direction that the instrumentals and lyrics take you. A Skeletal Domain from start to end is a roller coaster of terror, aggression, and more blood than a pit of zombies.
It has been tough to mark down which songs have been my favorite as every song has its own feel and personality to it. I will mention a few, but keep in mind that I enjoy the rest of the tracks on record. It might be that I love (and laugh) at these song titles as well. The first single released, ‘Sadistic Embodiment’, really sets the course for the album. This track showcases what Cannibal Corpse is all about and then some. ‘Funeral Cremation’ was another stand out track for me with easily the creepiest opening to any song of theirs to date by ever so slightly dipping into the world of Blackened Death Metal. The guitar riff has given me goosebumps with every listen which is a rarity nowadays in a quite monotonous heavy metal world. The very next track may be my favorite off the album and certainly one of the best titles, ‘Icepick Lobotomy’. This song brings the brutality one would expect from death metal, but also stays groovy enough to keep your head banging. One last track I’d like to recommend is ‘Bloodstained Cement.’ This track starts off on a speed kick that is guaranteed to help your inner lead foot press the gas pedal just a tad harder. Then the song takes a heavy turn and actually makes you believe you are smashing some poor souls face off of the sidewalk.
A Skeletal Domain has shown the world that Cannibal Corpse is still on top of their death metal game and just how evil these guys can be. This album will certainly be in my considerations for album of the year in about three months from now. Despite all of the praise I have given this newest release, it didn’t make me say “Wow!” out loud as often as, say, Kill did. Having said that, I love the direction this album went and am happy to know that even after thirteen albums, these death metal gods are still capable of spreading their violent blend of metal. Cannibal Corpse has once again proven to me why I do not waste my time listening to Six Feet Under.
8/10
TIM LEDIN