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“I remember sitting me down and pointing Papa Roach and Linkin Park had sold six million albums while hadn’t sold a tenth of that,” Moreno recalled in a 2010 interview. 3 with over 117,000 copies sold-enough to earn the top spot on Billboard in any given week in 2017, but the kind of numbers that led to a stern talking-to from the label in 2000. The concept of mixing nu-metal with new wave wasn’t entirely original-after all, Orgy scored a major hit with a cover of “ Blue Monday.” But despite its sharper dynamics, louder vocals, glossier production, and a wealth of earworm choruses, White Pony was still not as obvious as playing New Order songs in drop-D. It’s easy to see things from the perspective of Maverick-the band’s label at the time-when Moreno, bassist Chi Cheng, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham, and turntablist/synth player Frank Delgado turned in the masters for White Pony in 2000. Going further down that path would mean courting tastemakers who would likely still snicker at the name “Deftones,” but it also left them without an easily identifiable target market. 12 single of 1998-but it never stuck on radio and as a total outlier on Around the Fur, it was an obvious fork in Deftones trajectory.
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Critics took notice-it was chosen as SPIN’s No. The sonic genesis of White Pony came from Around the Fur’s second single, “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away),” which was nothing short of nu-metal’s “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Not only was it the first indication of Moreno’s fatalistic romanticism, but it was also the band’s first embrace of outright melody it’s the closest thing to a classic Smashing Pumpkins song to come out in the same year as Adore.
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Deftones’ sophomore bow, 1997’s Around the Fur, had no real bars, per se, but its aggression and imagery played just as well at Warped Tour, Ozzfest, skate parks, mosh pits, and other places where metalheads and hip-hop fans tangled dreads. What’s more rap-metal than lead singer Chino Moreno dropping in on Korn’s 1996 album Life Is Peachy to help cover Ice Cube’s “Wicked.” In both chronology and sound, Deftones’ 1995 debut Adrenaline was stuck between stations: not quite rap enough, but somehow missing out on the inconceivable moment when stone-faced post-hardcore acts like Helmet and Unsane were the subject of seven-figure bidding wars.
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But Deftones were once undoubtedly rap-metal. White Pony may have transcended the dubious genre by fashioning a truly new form from post-hardcore, industrial, trip-hop, shoegaze, ambient electronics, and synth-pop. It also created a context where Deftones could make an album about sex, drugs, and druggy sex that cemented their reputation as rock’s most unmarketable weirdos. Yet, this was the music that moved millions of units during a prosperous time for the music industry. Nu-metal was angry music-some of it sourced from childhood trauma and the despair of rural and suburban America outside the so-called monoculture some of it sourced from the toxic masculinity ingrained in that monoculture.