The new millennium was less than a week old when Deftones decamped to a Hollywood mansion to begin work on their third album. They were already in imperious form: their two previous albums – 1995’s Adrenaline and 1997’s Around The Fur – established them as one of the most acclaimed, innovative and incendiary bands to emerge in the ’90s. And a lot of bands (not to mention labels) were getting rich by peddling a brain cell-deficient strain of their musical DNA. But while Deftones – alongside Korn – were hailed as the founding fathers of the ascendant nu-metal scene, that very notion rankled with them. Instead of pride, they felt constricted – prisoners of association to a scene they never intended to create. What was needed, then, was a defining artistic statement – a clinical, ina...
