Saturday Night Wrist : Deftones : Review : Rolling Stone

This Cali quintet was the artiest of the new-metal bands, honing a savage and spaced-out guitar-and-keyboard attack that got dense as hell on 2003's Deftones. Saturday Night Wrist is slightly cleaned-up, but it's as dark as the Deftones have ever gotten, with sludgy stoner-rock bumping against prog-metal chops and scorched-earth atmospherics. It's a weird blend of viscerally shaking (hopped-up slashers like "The Earth"), artfully alluring ("Beware," which has cricket sound effects) and unfocused oblivion ("Cherry Waves"). Tool and Korn are prime reference points, but another one is more surprising: Radiohead. "Mein," an industrial banger with swooshy space-rock overlays, finds Tarzan-like yowler Chino Moreno doing a credible Thom Yorke. The songwriting never quite comes together, but this is a metal record that gets by as much on sonic tricks as monster riffs.