S’posedly 2 reviewers called this band Deftones the “Radiohead of metal”. Now, I don’t know anything ’bout music beyond what my early 2000s radio stations let me listen to, so I don’t know what this “Radiohead” is or why it’s been detached from its Radiobody, but we can assume it must be cheesy & lame, given that Deftones is a nu-metal band, & e’eryone knows all nu-metal bands are silly & lame.
So we’re going to look @ their biggest album, White Pony.
1. Back to School (Mini Maggit)
We start with the greatest song Deftones has e’er made. ¡Just look @ that amazing music video!
This song, which shows off Chino Moreno’s amazing rippity rapping skills with these hard bars ’bout the street thug life in high school:
while everyone’s out trying to make the cut (what)
& when you think you know me right, i switch it up
behind the walls, smokin’ cigarettes and sippin’ vodka
i hop a fence to catch a cab, ain’t no one can stop us
Yeah, ¡cracka! ¡We be smokin’ cigs & jumping the fence to catch a cab! Paragraph to yo’ auntie.
Then in the chorus he boasts ’bout how back in school, we are the leaders o’ all. ¡Yeah! ¡Fuck being an adult! I’m going back to school to be a leader! ¡Push back that square!
Unironically, this song is musically excellent, especially thanks to those opening high-pitched noodly strings & those menacing low-tuned guitar riffs that bounce up & down thruout the verses while less low guitar noises break thru.
Grade: S
2. Feiticeira
Sadly, we don’t get any mo’ hippity hop songs & the next song is some droning song with super clear, clacking drums that’s ’bout… ¿a Brazilian woman being kidnapped?
Chino Moreno sings here from the perspective of a person who has been kidnapped. He explained on Deftones World: “It’s named after a Brazilian female, but its lyrically about a kidnapping scenario. It details a few hours of being held captive. There’s a lot of dialogue in there that was fun to write.”
That’s, um, an interesting topic to write ’bout. Glad you had fun writing ’bout it.
Tho it’s not as amazing as their previous magnum opus, this song has some great music itself, including the aforementioned super clear, clacking drums, the revving opening strings, & especially the bellowing low notes during the interlude ’tween the 1st & 2nd verses.
Grade: S
3. Digital Bath
Still doing this weird slow, droning singing instead o’ that amazing rapping from “Back to School” for some reason… O, well, this song’s all right with its beautiful imagery o’… ¿somebody leading a girl into a bathtub & murdering her by electrocution by throwing a toaster in it & then standing her corpse up & dressing it? OK, Deftones, ¿what the fuck? Real talk: ’tween these 2 songs & that album cover leering down @ a woman’s cleavage, this band are starting to sound like those weird edgy incels that women avoid in school. ¡You’re not going to be leaders back in school like that, Deftones! Ironically, the fact that this song is so much better written than the average misogynist nu-metal song — & there are a lot — with its strong imagery & detail contrasted gainst the average nu-metal bands’ generic, abstract word salads makes it sound worse.
& for a song with such imagery, ¿who the fuck decided to make the music video just trite footage o’ them playing on stage, them screwing around in their tour bus, crowds cheering, a few scraps o’ unclear imagery — I think there’s 1 shot o’ a bubbling bathtub — &… ¿a custodian mopping the floor? We really needed that clip. Good o’ Deftones to show some support for the underappreciated blue-collar worker, I guess.
Anyway, despite all those flaws, this is a very nice-sounding song, especially its opening smoky whistle noises, more o’ those super clear drums, & those moody notes. I might e’en go far ’nough to say that the bizarre droning singing that goes from tired to loud moaning works well for a bizarre song ’bout killing a woman with a toaster in a bathtub.
Grade: S
4. Elite
I was going to criticize this song as a forgettable banger where the singer just keeps shouting in his whispry voice — ¿where is that rapping, Chino? You’re wasting your Eminem-like skills, man — with a clunky, repetitive melody in both singing & playing, mixed up only with unimpressive filter effects that make the singer sound like an alien. But then I read the lyrics, which are impossible to hear thru Chino’s singing, & they’re amazing: any song with lyrics that go, “stop parading your angles / ¿confused? you’ll know when you’re ripe”, deserves an S in my book. He’s right: people should stop parading their angles; angles aren’t special — e’eryone’s got ’em, folks.
Grade: S
5. Rx Queen
I was going to joke ’bout how I think Deftones is like Radiohead in that they just pull random lyrics out o’ a hat to sound deep, which is how we get lines like, “we’ll stop to rest on the moon”; but to be fair, other than that & most o’ the lyrics from the previous song, this song’s lyrics actually serve a clever metaphor o’ parasitical insects stinging another, killing it for sustenance, for a toxic relationship involving drugs, which fits well with the wasplike low drone o’ this song & the title o’ this song — presumably referring to his girlfriend. I know this song is still falling into the “dead girl syndrome” trope o’ cheap dark drama, but a’least this is a mo’ relatable problem, not just the singer out o’ nowhere coming up with the idea o’ women being kidnapped in Brazil or electrocuted in a bath tub. Plus, this time the song mostly works in abstract metaphors, & this time to the song’s benefit. So, sure, have ’nother S. ¿Why not?
Grade: S
6. Street Carp
Ah, now here we go; now we’re on familiar territory: a man whining ’bout his bitchy ex-wife.
Actually, being 100% honest, this song kinda blows ass. The way Chino sings, “ohhhh, well, here’s my new aaadrehhhhs / ¡6! ¡6! ¡4! ohhhhhh, I forgehhhhht”, sounds so terrible it actually impresses me. Like, you have to be very creative to come up with something so sonically toxic. Meanwhile, the singing & music are just repetitive, bland versions o’ what’s done better on other songs & the opening, where we have grinding guitars filtered thru what sounds like Game Boy Advance speakers & a sudden, “¡nyaaaaaah!”, is just goofy as hell. “It’s not that I care”, indeed. But this song makes me laugh, it has a funny name like “Street Carp”, which Genius tells me is probably this song’s protagonist calling his ex a ho bag, &, most importantly, I have already settled on my joke o’ giving e’ery song on this album as S rank for the memes, so here ya go.
Grade: S
7. Teenager
Not gonna lie: considering how creepy & weird this band has been ’bout women, I felt dread when I saw a song called “Teenagers” that I’d get a good ol’ fashioned Beatles-type “well, she was just 17…”. Luckily, in this case, the protagonist is also a teenager, & this is probably the least creepy song Deftones has e’er wrote ’bout a woman.
I’m a sucker for record player texture — which is why my hipster ass has a vinyl record player & such classics as 3 Three Days Grace albums, Korn’s Issues, & 311’s greatest hits on vinyl — as well as the weird alien sucking noises near the end & those soft drum beats, so have ’nother S.
Grade: S
8. Knife Prty
¿What does Chino have to say ’bout this song?
I made up this fake scenario of some kind of underworld society of knives, people who just get off on these erotic fantasies…or something like that. An ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ kind of thing.
OK, sure, yeah. ¿Does e’ery song need to be ’bout sex, tho? Like, you could just have the “underworld society of knives” without the sex & not make it weird.
Also, you have this weird-ass premise, ¿but you couldn’t come up with a better chorus than, “go get your knife, go get your knife”? ¿& why couldn’t you spell “knife” correctly in the title? ¿Did your “I” key on your keyboard fail to fire like mine keeps doing?
I do kind o’ like the muffled guitar notes that show up @ the beginning & keep coming back, but nothing else is all that interesting. I guess some woman is singing mo’ than halfway thru the song ’cause some woman happened to be singing in the next room. Yeah, that sounds like the reason this random part o’ the song is here.
Unfortunately, I can’t hear the lines, “’cause in here, we are all anemic”, which I’m sure are super deep &, uh, deep, but I can’t hear that line without hearing that e’en mo’ fantastic line from Young Thug: “i’m like i’m anemic too / a Neiman Marcus shoppperrrrr”. & by, “unfortunately”, I mean, “unfortunately, I have to give you an S grade for that”.
Grade: S
9. Korea
The only interesting part o’ this song is that we finally learn the reason this album is called White Pony: it’s cocaine. It’s too bad this is the least interesting song on this album, talking ’bout doing drugs & partying. It doesn’t sound bad, mind you: it has the same crisp production with sharp drumbeats & heavy guitar riffs; I’m just saying, if I had to remove a song, it’d have been this & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”.
I mean, e’en the title has no relevance:
While the album was released in 2000, Deftones have not toured South Korea until 2009. Unless they traveled there within that era, the title of the song seems to be unrelated.
Bro, ¿how do you name an entire song “Korea” & not tour in a’least 1 o’ them for nearly a decade? Unless this band did tour in North Korea, which would be pretty bad ass & would immediately merit an S grade, but also hard to believe, I’m afraid I can’t in good conscience give this song an S grade, so I’ll just give it a South Korean flag emoji instead:
Grade: 🇰🇷
10. Passenger
I’ve heard a lot o’ people lavishly praise on this song, presumably ’cause it features Maynard James Keenan, lead singer o’ Tool, e’ery hipster’s favorite prog-metal band, & A Perfect Circle, the band that people list when they want to be e’en mo’ hipster, & the guy whose name I always mix up with the economist John Maynard Keynes. I think it’s all right, I guess. Genius says, “this slow-burning ballad is rife with metaphorical imagery and atmospheric musical arrangements”, ¿& who am I to argue with them? I’ll tell you who I am: J. J. W. Mezun, certified nu-metal specialist. I don’t really see much metaphorical imagery in this song’s lyrics, which mostly seems to describe parts o’ the inside o’ a car mo’ than anything. I also don’t see what’s so atmospheric ’bout the repetitive “nuh-nuh-nuh nuh nuh” riffs thruout most o’ this song, broken off by the sparse, seemingly arrhythmic drum beats ’hind the verses. I do kind o’ like Keenan’s vocal performance on the choruses, I guess. I also find it funny that the Genius note assumes this song is ’bout people having sex in a car, ’cause presumably e’ery Deftones song needs to be ’bout weird sex.
But if e’eryone else is saying this song is amazing, I must be wrong, so here’s ’nother S:
Grade: S
11. Change (In the House of Flies)
You know, it’s ironic that the labels apparently pushed Deftones into making a new song that eventually became their magnum opus, “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, ’cause this album s’posedly had no hits ( my apologies for the eye-searing white text on red background ), only for this other song to become a far mo’ iconic & successful hit for them. As amazing as “Back to School” is, this song truly defines this band, with its iconic opening notes, ghostly wind sounds, & following foreboding drums, followed by a perishing voice calling out, “i watched you chaaaaange”. Best o’ all, this song takes a break from this album’s typical thematic obsessions with sex & violence gainst women — a’least I think it does — & instead focuses on the classic literary trope o’ someone transforming into an insect like Gregor Samsa. There’s not much imagery to this song’s lyrics — or many lyrics @ all — but that sparseness fits well with this sparse song, which, like Franz Kafka Metamorphosis, is a mystery that is mo’ ’bout what isn’t said than what is.
There. ¿See? I can be just as good a hipster lyrical analyst — I just noticed how goofy that word looks, including the word “anal” in it, as if it meant “somebody who studies rectums” — as any upper-middle-class liberal arts college cracker who won’t shut the fuck up ’bout Tame Impala.
Grade: S
12. Pink Maggit
The acceptance o’ this song by critics & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” is proof that critics will love any slow, dreary song, no matter how inane, as this song literally has the same goofy-ass chorus as that song, ’cept now it’s trying to sound serious when saying “pushed back the square” & “’cause back in school / we are the leader of it all” — ’cept in this song we also get some extra violence gainst women with “now that you need her, but you don’t” replaced with “now that you kneed her in the throat”.
Since we are taking these lyrics seriously now apparently, instead o’ just laughing @ their goofiness, I should add that the sentiment ’hind this song is really dumb:
The title comes from a Kool Keith song. We just thought it was some funny stuff. The song is meant to be triumphant. I’m trying to spread a little confidence. Lots of artists try to make songs for the kids who are tormented in school, telling them it’s okay to be tormented. But it’s not okay. Don’t be ridiculed. Become the leader of your surroundings. Confidence is one of the most important things in life. If you are confident, you can do whatever you want.
Chino Moreno
That’s good advice to people being bullied: “¡just stand up for yourself & stop letting yourself be bullied!” This super deep album literally ends with fucking pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-help bullshit. Thank you, Deftones, for the best April Fool’s joke.
All that being said… I’m a sucker for the slow build up, with Chino sounding like he’s being strangled like a squealing horse — ¿a squealing white pony? — near the end o’ the intro just to hold it back e’en mo’, only for the song to finally stop edging & finally start cumming with its blast o’ rock-hard guitar riffs that make me rock hard, similar to Tool’s “Parabol” leading into “Parabola” — & therefore turning my cock into a parabola… Wait, I don’t think that’s the right shape.
Having said that, ironically I think this song ending the album only makes it make mo’ sense for this album to start with “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, giving this album a bookends feel that wouldn’t be there when starting with “Feiticeira”, which also doesn’t start with nearly as iconic an opening as “Back to School”.
Grade: S
Final Verdict
White Pony is a 1-o’-a-kind album, instantly recognizable but impossible to copy, with lyrics taking sharp turns on e’ery song, e’en if many o’ those sharp turns are kinda dumb. ¿But does it have an angsty song ’bout The Wizard of Oz? Because it doesn’t, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite meet an S grade, but will have to settle for a, “白子🐎”.
Final Grade: 白子🐎
