Ohms certainly doesn’t lack for the forceful grooves the Deftones have always used to send entire venues into body-slamming fits. And, for better or worse, they have stayed true the whole time to their stomping, cement-footed sense of rhythm-that is, until now. Over the years, songs like “Digital Bath” (2000), “Change (In the House of Flies)” (2000), “Battle Axe” (2003), “Minerva” (2003), “Beware” (2006), and so many others have shown just how haunting this band can be when they want to be. If you’ve sat down with anything in the Deftones catalog from 2000’s White Pony onwards, it will come as no surprise that the band’s ninth studio effort Ohms arrives chock full of moody passages where down-tuned guitars are levitated by vaporous keyboard swells and ghostly vocals. They also embraced an increasingly arty sensibility that guided them in crafting a unique hybrid of metal, goth, hip-hop production, and shoegaze. Eventually, all three worked together to infuse the leaden density of the band’s sound with pockets of atmosphere.

At around the same point, frontman/guitarist and Cure/Depeche Mode fanatic Chino Moreno began to wear his non-metal influences on his sleeve, with guitarist Stephen Carpenter soon following suit. Unorthodox in his approach, Delgado didn’t partake in anything close to traditional scratching, instead favoring a soundscapist’s approach that immediately set the Sacramento, California quintet a world apart from the band-with-DJ stereotype embodied by the likes of Limp Bizkit, Incubus, and Sugar Ray. It’s been over two decades since the Deftones broke free of their status as nu-metal/rap-rock avatars with the addition of experimental DJ/keyboardist Frank Delgado in 1997.

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