The White Pony thread

[Vesanic]

In another thread someone said White Pony was overrated. Now there's a few protective obsessive hardcores on this forum and I thought the guy was bashing people who love the record. Although, it's after replying that I gave it much thought and reconsidering, and I want to put a theory on front, because hell you and I all spend too much time talking non-sense about this band anyway so shit might as well get serious :


White Pony actually is overrated, as a Deftones record.


Now get this, White Pony, even at this point in my life after so many years and so much more music than when I first listened to it, is my favorite piece of music. It is obviously my favorite record by the (fuck you I won't name this band the way you want me to) Deftones. Yes, I think it is, without a doubt, overrated. When Deftones' fans read something like "White Pony is overrated", they just instantly believe someone is calling the album out. However, if that was true, I would make no sense right now, given that it's my favorite album. I want to make sure my point will be made clear to all, let's break down on a simple definition of the word :


Overrated : Esteemed too highly
"Beatles are overrated"


Whenever you hear a music record is overrated, you spin it and can have three different reactions :

a) Negative : You don't like it so much or flat out hate it and think it's not one of the band's masterpieces everyone is talking about.
b) Positive : You like it a lot or fall in love with it, and think it is the band's ultimate piece.
c) Relative : Whether you personally like the record or not, you put the record back in the context of the band's previous, present and expected future abilities (basics of the sound evolution), and try to make some sense out of what the band's music is about, as a whole, even with a quick vision. Productions and such things are implied.

Now I want to talk about people who say a CD (hah) is overrated in a band's discography : at the core, all one does is thinking the album doesn't live up to its general reputation. At this point, there is no quality discussion : they just do not think the most popular opinion of the album is right.


If I were a journalist on the roll of a generic webzine, I'd say White Pony is an experimental metal/punk/so, so, soooo shoegaze/trip-hop record. This record was released by a band who crafted their band's direction playing two albums full of intense metal songs with the right occasional melodic twist. It took the audience off guard. They created an effect of surprise that put them on this god-like band status that lifted them above everything even in their personal lives. Obviously that would make for a memorable release, we all remember when something so apparently-dysfunctional happens.

Bearing in mind the fact that they never really recreated such a boom, this record, unlike the self-titled, doesn't get the love just from the nostalgics and the very few peers who can envision the musical quality hiding in the emotional chaos. It gets love from emotional nostalgics, from musicians in the know, from the "mainstream", from people who don't like metal, from people who don't like the band, etc. It gets love from probably 50% people who even know Deftones is a band's name. People recognize the LP for its uniqueness, whatever Chino Moreno says about his further works sounding like it, there actually isn't one Deftones record you can compare White Pony direction to. Not ATF, not the S/T - should I even go on?

All in all, White Pony was the first globally-recognized proof that no, Deftones were not just another metal band. I think that's why people who don't like metal wouldn't feel wrong digesting it, it's not exactly carved into one style, it goes different places, there's absolutely no sense of being trapped into a one-dimensional piece of music. It's open to the world, and the world embraced it like a cultural treasure. White Pony is the crooning noisy messy Deftones, displaying a sound with enough extra traits to call it evolved, and produced well enough to call it artistically credible in the context of their music. Basically, White Pony is a metal band showing something new, and ultimately, very unique. This created an effect of people, LOTS of people, citing this record as the band's very best for years to come. People can sometimes value music more on what it created in the community than on what it did on themselves, and this is how, I think, the pony eventually appeared like a horse.

Earlier, I said people using the o-word about a band's record just didn't agree on the album's rep. In our story, we have two different types of White Pony lovers : one, the ones who think it's Deftones' very best and there's nothing to see above - two, the ones who think it is a tremendous experimentation in Deftones music. I, the "WP is my fav music" guy, am in side two : it is a brilliant Tones record, but ultimately, the very simplistic "This is the band's best" doesn't apply here, because this would mean this record embodies the most important and obvious atmospheres Deftones can trigger, and that is just not true. White Pony is an abstract morphing of Adrenaline and Around the Fur. How can one say a band's album is a staple when it's really that staple taken somewhere it hadn't been beforehand?

I believe this is why most people saying White Pony is overrated, do say it. It's because lots of fans of the record often forget it's actually NOT a Deftones classic, and these same fans still believe and preach that it is the band being at its best level, as a whole, as a group and as a music experience. But White Pony is basically the "Around the Fur Deftones members" being just the right bit too much of themselves individually and battling enough about it with music instruments to unexpectedly create gold. Can you call this a band being at their best, in terms of harmony and musicianship? White Pony is a beautiful accident, and the self-titled was its pissed wheelchaired victim.

White Pony is overrated because, as beautiful and unique an experience as it is, it's just what it is : a music band's punctual accident, not its best, not an actual harmony and perfect mash of what each member can do individually, produced the most effective and amazing way. That would be Around the Fur. 

[laurapalmer]

Disagree, respectfully of course. White Pony is properly rated. It is seen as a landmark record of that place and time for experimental metal but it is far from being listed amongst other landmark records in other genres from the early Aughts. I think it is the best start to finish Deftones record in its entirety and I think that sentiment is fairly popular throughout. I could agree with you in a sense that it is "overrated" by members of this board. It safely lands in my top 5-10 favorite albums of all time but do I think it's one of the 5-10 BEST albums ever recorded? No. But it's still the best whole Deftones album ever, by far.

[Jerry_Curls]

^ same. It's properly rated. At the crucial moment in music history, deftones created an album that sounded like the future (from a Y2k perspective). Every time I listen to the album, it gives me a sense of technology and sex blending into one. Kind of how Kid A impacted the traditional rock and roll standards and created its own world/aesthetic, White Pony does the same for me (and I hope other people as well). The whole vibe of the packaging, the EPK, the internet parties, deftones WORLDWIDE... It impacted the metal scene in ways that others hadn't done.

People who say it's overrated are just metal-purists who can't fully grasp other types of music.

[Vesanic]

Actually didn't mean to put White Pony in a general music spectrum. Seeing it in a "Top 100 Most Influential Albums" kinda thing would be a trip.

I believe most people who say it is overrated say so in the context of their discography. It's definitely properly rated, looking at the big picture.

[77years]

It's easy to forget what a game changer it was at the time

This was the era of Kid A & Napster & everything was lousy... no more hardcore, no more good indie rock, things were shitty

It was, for me, the last really, really good album for a while

[rainnyx4]

Best album.