Year Of Metal #071: Deftones - Around The Fur
In an effort to cover primarily records that I hadn’t heard before, nu metal doesn’t feature prominently on this list. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, I (and the rest of my g-g-generation) went through a nu metal phase, and even if it didn’t stick, I’m already familiar enough with most of the big hitters’ early aughts oeuvres. The second tier of that particular subgenre, meanwhile, seems too ghastly to get involved with. The big nu metal act who escaped my attention at the time were Deftones. Save for the anthemic “Back To School”, they were harder edged and generally weirder, which kept them from really appealing to me as a 12 year old looking for my post-pop-punk fix in alternative music.
I finally listened to White Pony in full a couple of years back and it’s no surprise Deftones have survived the test of time far better than their contemporaries. Their music is hard edged but thoughtful; angsty but not sophomoric in its rage. So I was a little apprehensive when the first two tracks on 1997’s Around The Fur start on, to me, a rather boilerplate note. They set themselves apart by cultivating a genuinely creepy aura: the production on Chino Moreno’s vocals is superb throughout the record, and on opener “My Own Summer (Shove It)” he sounds impeccably creepy, like he’s cutting a take while hiding in the air vents. But the music never moves beyond a couple of rudimentary down tuned riffs, all of which sound like they’d require the sum total of one finger to play. That simplicity isn’t an issue in the short term, but I felt myself bracing for a full album of this, which I was struggling to get excited for.
Things take a turn on the immensely sinister “Mascara”. This is such a deliciously horrible song, with a throbbing, wobbling, restrained riff from Stephen Carpenter and a clean, pleading vocal from Moreno. Apparently he wrote this about his wife, though it seems to me to so clearly be a terrifying song about abuse that I wonder if he said that for a bit of an edgelord laugh. “It’s too bad / You’re married / To me,” he coos as the song peaks. It’s spine chilling stuff, and while the song hits you with some heavy playing at points, it’s so much more dynamically interesting than what came before. This really forces you to sit up and pay attention.
Not long after that, they shift gears again on “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)”, which is near enough an honest to goodness pop song. Without sacrificing the heft, the riff is downright sugary: great big bubblegum guitars, a wall of imposing but lovely sound. Even the lyrics seem to be on a hopeful note, with Moreno dreaming of a more positive future on the road ahead. I’ve seen critics suggest there are shoegaze elements to this album, and while I’m not sure about that, I could see Kevin Shields piling up his guitars like this. They’re blisteringly loud and tonally quite vicious but what they’re playing is so pristine and even pretty.
My favourite track by some way comes right at the end. “MX” is another eerie track, and if this time the edginess is a little more performative on the part of Moreno, I don’t have a problem with that. It’s structured around a phone call between the singer and a woman (Annalynn Cunningham, then-wife of drummer Abe) discussing the terms of their relationship. Moreno draws out his lines with casual malice, making his every line sound so offhandedly disquieting. Musically it’s closer to the thumping style of typical nu metal, but the psychological horror of the track feels so far beyond what the red Yankees cap contingent of the heavy music fraternity were up to at the time.
Once you get all the way through Around The Fur, the more obvious heft of the first two tracks makes a lot more sense. I liked this album so much better on repeat listens; it feels like it reveals its character to you. On the outset it’s an angry, fist-swinging thug of a record, but there’s a ton to be found within, from sweetness and light to a genuine dark heart.
