Review by Vinny for Deftones - Diamond Eyes (2010)

Some fifteen years ago, after I had taken a brief break from metal altogether, I picked up Diamond Eyes on iTunes as my reintroduction back into the scene. I was not a fan of the band prior to this but reconciled to go back into the metal world with something different. During my brief dalliance with nu-metal in the early noughties I had become aware of 'Back to School' (from White Pony) which was all over Kerrang TV at the time, and to be honest I had never really been all that bothered by it. I didn’t love it, and I didn’t hate it either, it just passed me by because of over-exposure, I guess. Coming back to metal with Diamond Eyes (now I revisit it in retrospect) seems like an odd choice therefore, but I guess the non-metal elements here, the dreamy, hazy sensibilities helped ease me back in. That having been said, some of the riffing here is right up my alley still.

I recall now, as I write this review (triggered by seeing Daniel’s thoughts earlier this week) that it was the single 'Rocket Skates' that brought me to the album in the first place. That auditory assault of frenetic riffage and those screamed vocals “guns, razors, knives!” still prove to be a real adrenaline trip to this day, which is the sign of a great song, that it can invoke the same reaction from an older, much more underground dwelling metalhead, some fifteen years after they first heard it. However, there was much more to savour on the record once I had got past the frenzy of 'Rocket Skates'. Opening with the title track, the album seems to bring together all the elements that I now know to be contained across the album into one track. Bruising riffs, dreamy and yet also scathing vocals, dense atmospheres, balanced percussion and a constant murky, seedy undertone.

There is a darkness inherent in Diamond Eyes. It is a theme that is not always obvious. For all its pleasantries, its indistinct tranquillity, its promise of peaceful and soothing music, there also lies the sharper, more jarring, less subdued emotions of someone barely containing these more troubling emotions. It is an album written by a band who always sound on the fucking edge. I am reminded of one my cats that I miss dearly. She could be adorable, playful and outright loving one moment and in the next you had claw marks across the back of the same hand that she was just nuzzling mere milliseconds ago. That’s what Diamond Eyes is like. It is forty-one minutes of a false sense of security, and I fucking love it.

Album highlight for me here is the sultry and brooding ‘Beauty School’. The way the bass and the drums work together here to set the boundaries of the atmosphere is great. The lyrics are full of covert sexual connotations as fans of the band will come to expect, yet it plays like a modern ballad to the uninitiated. The bass once again is a key component on ‘Prince’, alongside those chiming keys and that down tuned guitar it makes for one of the more intense tracks on the album. I can only point to one criticism of Diamond Eyes and that is that it is a shade too long in the sense that once we get to the last couple of tracks it just starts to sound like the same ideas being rehashed in some regard. Forty-one minutes is not a long album runtime by any means of course, but when you get involved with it, properly in amongst the songs, that immersion does make elements of repetition standout even more I find. Still so glad that I came back to it this bank holiday weekend though, in so many ways an important album for me as it turns out.