I woke up at like 8am yesterday to go to the bathroom. I checked here out of habit and saw the single had dropped overseas. So of course I was up for a few hours listening to it and checking in around here.
I absolutely love the song. Those opening/closing riffs are so fun and jammy. The song itself is very warm, bright and almost euphoric. I was very surprised at first that it was the closing track. After hearing Chino's remarks about it in the NME interview it makes more sense though. Rubicon was a lot more intense, but it also had that optimistic, euphoric vibe. Rubicon is more of a soaring song while Ohms is a bit more grounded, but that's three albums in a row now with very optimistic closing tracks. Earlier in their career they always went with dark and experimental tracks. What Happened To You definitely fits the experimental description, but not at all a "dark" song IMO.
I'm trying to find the words to explain this, because people will think I am crazy.......Ohms feels like the shadow, the other side of the coin, the ying to the yang of Hexagram. Just that big, rhythmic guitar driven sound. Hexagram is the gritty, unsettling dark side-whereas Ohms is the warm, safe and uplifting bright side. Probably doesn't make sense to most people, but it just reminded me of Hexagram right out of the gate. Now when I listen to Hexagram, I hear shades of Ohms as well. Ok, so hence the description "safe" though. Ohms does have its own unique sound, but it's not surprising. You can never guess what Deftones will do, but once you hear it you're like "Yep. THAT is Deftones". Ohms, while different, makes perfect sense as a Deftones song. It doesn't blow you away and blindside you with something totally unexpected. Hexagram did though. After WP, no one knew what to expect with S/T........but when they first popped on the album, I can't imagine many people were expecting what they heard on that first track. I doubt that all makes much sense. But's that what I am good at. Writing paragraphs trying to explain something just for it to read like nonsense lol.
Back to Ohms as it stands on it's own........It's my 2nd favorite pre-album single in the Sergio era, behind only Leathers. So yeah, I like it more than Rocket Skates, Diamond Eyes, Tempest, Prayers and Doomed User. My only two complaints would be that Frank sounds almost invisible, and there was no interesting bridge. Those are pretty glaring flaws. I'm particularly worried about Frank. Hopefully it's just this one track. I'd be super sad if he was this low in the mix on a lot of songs. I'd still give it a solid 8/10 though.
At the end of the day, it's the perfect track to remind the world "Hey, we're back." Nothing too extreme or experimental that would cause too much speculation. ...."Are they going super soft now?"...... "OMG It's so heavy I hope the entire album is like this"....... "Ugh this doesn't even sound like Deftones. They need to stop letting Chino write songs". Unique enough to stand on it's own, but still simply pure Deftones.
