Deftones: Ohms review – fighting time and tide with undimmed ferocity

Deftones’ dedication to expanding the boundaries of metal has set them apart from their contemporaries. Nonetheless, their experimental bent doesn’t dampen their music’s equally potent hit of 1990s nostalgia: their ninth album, Ohms, feels more pre-9/11 America than Fred Durst’s backward caps. The guitars thrash, the drums are punishingly thwacked, and everything is presented with that slick-on-the-ear nu-metal production style once helped the genre become a pop-culture phenom.

Though they’ve lost little intensity since the mid-90s, Ohms finds the Sacramento band grappling with middle age. After opener Genesis floats on to the horizon with tranquility – the warbling synths and slippery guitar lines of the intro feel influenced by David Gilmour – the softness evaporates. Chino Moreno reaches for familiar phoenix imagery (“Climbing out of the ashes”) and defiantly asserts that he will “taste a lifestyle that never gets old”. On the brilliant title track, he looks at time simply as lost ground in the fight against climate change, slipping into a “hopeless sea of regret”. Bookending the album, the two songs offer balanced dispositions: the fight against the passage of time and the lament of time wasted.

Though the writing can be abstract, the outstanding Urantia spells out a break-up in rich detail: the cloak Moreno’s lover left behind, old cigarettes still sitting in an ashtray. There are underwhelming moments – the chugging guitar and indistinct melody of Headless goes nowhere – and Ohms lacks the lateral thinking that distinguished the band’s masterpiece, White Pony. Still, by streamlining their sound, Deftones have made an album that proves that ferocity is not a diminishing resource.

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