Couldn't help myself. Got ripped and watched the video a couple times last night.
First, one of their better videos. Love this band, but have been eternally frustrated by how the videos often don't match the vibe of their music.
Musically, dug it. No rehashes of old riffs or sounds here. The structure is varied enough to keep it interesting with some amazing textures. Steph's guitar is obviously the driving force behind the song and some of the effects he used here blew me out of the water. Sounds like an electric field or video game sound effects at times, in a good way. Can see what some people were saying about it sounding like 311 and Smashing Pumpkins (never got into CKY so I can't comment on that), and it definitely sounds different for the band, but still like something they should be doing. The breakdown riff towards the end also gave me a Hum vibe as well, reminding me of stuff like Dreamboat or the breakdown in Stars. On that note, I do wish like others have said, that they stayed on that outro for longer. Chino stated that the song was initially 12 minutes, and that Steph really loves to drive home his riffs. I could totally see the song droning on at the end with that riff a la Hum, adding some fills and flourishes to keep it fresh, and just creating this wall of sound that crescendos before abruptly cutting out. Hope that 12 minute mix still exists somewhere.
Terry Date produced this well. Gore still sounds like garbage to this day, but I will maintain that Deftones' producers are more important for how the album sounds than the overall quality of the songwriting. Gore suffers both from how it sounds and the lack of enthusiasm of the band for crafting the songs.
The artwork really grew on me last night as well. My girlfriend and I stared at it for a while and brought away a bunch of different interpretations. Initially I thought it was really dumb because it looked like something a 10 year old made in MS paint. But the abstract and lo-fi quality of it I think is genius now. My girlfriend pointed out that if you cover either of the eyes, it looks like the image reverses (the left eye will look like a right eye and vice versa).
A little sad that the album doesn't appear to be that long, but if they made something that sounds cohesive and bleeds the songs together to make it feel longer, I will be happy. Hoping it feels as tight as WP and KNY.
