Gore

Gore could be the Deftones’ best album, but you can earnestly say that about any album they’ve ever created and make a strong argument. If anything, it’s the most modern, and a statement that style and substance are not mutually exclusive. Gore has both.

Running at you full-steam ahead, seeing red and gutting you. This album is testament to the trials and tribulations they've endured and more so, how they've risen up.

This is a record of sweeping complexity, that captures the raw energy Deftones have always thrived upon without eschewing the benefits of an intelligent eye being cast over the production.

A solid album, one which, given time to explore its layers and textures, justifies investigations tenfold.

Largely flirting with conformity from a distance, Gore really comes into its own in the latter half, when Deftones open the silo doors on their buried missiles of epic melody.

This is not simply Koi No Yokan 2.0: if anything, its true parallel is White Pony, another moment in the band’s history that seemed to find them catching lightning in a bottle, condensing all of the elements that made their early sound so intriguing together with as-yet-unheard influences and producing a classic in the process.

Continuing to age gracefully, Deftones deliver an emotionally divided release with Gore, one that will continue to endear and swing with your own mood--however you're feeling.

A complex and ultimately rewarding listen.

Gore brings together light and dark, airy and grinding, in a way that makes these seemingly disparate qualities seem like natural allies.

Dragging their new wave and post-punk influences to the fore, the Sacramento crew have produced their most dynamic, adventurous and downright strange album in years.

All that you take in is that Gore is Deftones being Good Deftones. [9 Apr 2016, p.50]

While many of their contemporaries remain content with the particular style that brought them to the dance, Deftones never feared exploring new avenues to advance their sound; Gore represents their latest evolution.

It's a beautifully dark album. [May 2016, p.107]

Abstract and startling, listen to the hefty groove of Prayers/Triangles or the slow blooming Phantom Bride and feel the earth move beneath your feet.

Gore is a triumphant reminder that a veteran act can continue to grow and still remain relevant.

Yet again, Deftones have created a real beast of a record while still showing glimpses of its heart.

His [guitarist Stephen Carpenter's] fleeting interplay with Jerry Cantrell's sprawling guest solo reaches past minor curiosity to become an essential encounter on a record with countless unfurling highlights.

Nothing short of a name change will likely convince skeptics at this point, but Gore proves that Deftones can remain vital as they are relevant, if they don’t kill each other first.

Gore is a listen as complex and engrossing as we’ve come to expect from Deftones, and they continue to be a band that matures organically, becoming more and more fluid in their own craft.

If we pretend that on some level this album doesn’t contain the cringe-worthy hetero-male angst of early-2000s rock, we’d be lying to ourselves, but the technical quality of the work renders it engrossing nonetheless, especially taken alongside its odd tenderness, its prescient cultural relevance, and its culmination of the fluidity of gendered tropes that ran throughout their career, where the concept of aggression becomes as much a floating signifier among a sea of textural dynamics as a reification of rage.

Twenty-one years later, they're keeping both themselves and their listeners on edge.

While Gore is far from impenetrable, it’s still evident that Deftones are the most interesting and esoteric thing the radio-festival circuit might dare touch.

Even by Deftones standards, their eighth album is hardly immediate. [May 2016, p.71]

There’s the odd filler track, such as Phantom Bride--an experimental shriekathon, which even guitar parts from special guest Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains can’t save--but those aside, Gore is an album with the depth and emotional range that Deftones fans have come to expect.