reviewing the deftones catalog, one album at a time...
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Artist:
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Album:(Like) Linus
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Track:Gift
since i'm new to this site, as i said in my last post, i've got some catching up to do... i figure the best place for me to start is by reviewing the albums of my favorite band, deftones.i'll start before the beginning, with the demo album "(like) linus", released in 1993, by the band themselves.
i looked for a few years for this album, after reading much about it online. once i finally got my hands on a copy of it, it was worth the wait. it's got a few songs that ended up elsewhere, like engine no 9 and 7 words, both from the first major album, adrenaline. it's also got a demo of adrenaline's "root" with completely different vocals. it caught me off guard the first time i listened to it, because my brain was trying to sing along with the deftones classic. it's also got an early demo of teething, that ended up on the 1996 soundtrack for "the crow: city of angels."overall, the album is pretty raw, but if you're a deftones fan, it's pure gold. a few songs like "gift" go out of the range that you'd expect from deftones, and almost into a 311ish kind of vibe. "answers" is an early deftones song that sounds heavily influenced by reggae, which is an interesting contrast to the style you'd expect... and songs like "freaks" start to head into a 90's rap-rock sound, that for some reason reminds me of korn (and not in the good way, really)... but then the title track, hump, christmas, plastic, and venison more than make up for the few songs that i don't particularly love.the best part about this album is that no matter how far away it gets from what you expect out of deftones, it always sounds like chino, abe, chi, and steph. if you're not a deftones fan, this album won't turn you into one. it's nothing amazing, and that's probably why it's never been released on a large scale.. but if you are a deftones fan, you can't have a collection without these tracks. it's raw unfiltered deftones music, from back in the day when chino was a twig with dreadlocks, and they didn't have state of the art DJ'ing layered on top of their instruments.
i looked for a few years for this album, after reading much about it online. once i finally got my hands on a copy of it, it was worth the wait. it's got a few songs that ended up elsewhere, like engine no 9 and 7 words, both from the first major album, adrenaline. it's also got a demo of adrenaline's "root" with completely different vocals. it caught me off guard the first time i listened to it, because my brain was trying to sing along with the deftones classic. it's also got an early demo of teething, that ended up on the 1996 soundtrack for "the crow: city of angels."overall, the album is pretty raw, but if you're a deftones fan, it's pure gold. a few songs like "gift" go out of the range that you'd expect from deftones, and almost into a 311ish kind of vibe. "answers" is an early deftones song that sounds heavily influenced by reggae, which is an interesting contrast to the style you'd expect... and songs like "freaks" start to head into a 90's rap-rock sound, that for some reason reminds me of korn (and not in the good way, really)... but then the title track, hump, christmas, plastic, and venison more than make up for the few songs that i don't particularly love.the best part about this album is that no matter how far away it gets from what you expect out of deftones, it always sounds like chino, abe, chi, and steph. if you're not a deftones fan, this album won't turn you into one. it's nothing amazing, and that's probably why it's never been released on a large scale.. but if you are a deftones fan, you can't have a collection without these tracks. it's raw unfiltered deftones music, from back in the day when chino was a twig with dreadlocks, and they didn't have state of the art DJ'ing layered on top of their instruments.
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