No Filler Music Podcast - The Radiohead of Metal: Deftone's Around The Fur

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Eager to ditch the nu-metal label, Deftones headed into the studio with a goal to separate themselves from the pack on their second album Around the Fur. This ambition saw the group embrace their non-metal influences, leaning on the cerebral and ethereal qualities of bands like Depeche Mode. This combined with Chino Moreno's unusual vocals gave Around the Fur it's signature loud-soft dynamic, perhaps earning the band it's reputation as "the metal band it's okay for non-metal fans to like." Tracklist Deftones - My Own Summer (Shove It) Deftones - Lhabia Deftones - Mascara Deftones - Dai the Flu Deftones - Damone Deftones - Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Like our music, I picture it as being, you know, very ugly, you know, heavy chords, you know, and everything's really abrasive. And the music is really, I mean, but at the same time, it's really. soothing you know a lot of I think a lot of my melodies and and a lot of the the vulnerability that I that I put myself in when I sing is there are extremes and and just something I was into I think I picture fur as being really

glamorous and very beautiful but around the inside it's skin and it's so it's somewhat of them it's and it's ugly so it's somewhere of a metaphor for the music and just the way I feel sometimes about people you know being really pretty on the on the outside and ugly on the inside Welcome to No Filler, the music podcast, dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gems that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me, of course. And today we are talking about deaf tones and their second studio record around the fur. Came out in 1997. That was, of course, the lead. singer Chino Marino describing the two sides of the Deftones coin cue.

And that's what I'm excited about chatting about here, Q. Yes, I am not familiar with Deftones at all. One of those bands, you know, and there's just so many of them out there like this, where it's like, what have I been waiting for, you know? Yeah. Like, I know they've been there around. I know that they're iconic. iconic yeah and yeah I didn't really know what to expect but I really like that and yeah that

juxtaposition that you're talking about in that clip really shines through in this song you just get punched in the face with that chorus yeah so that that was my own summer parentheses shove it's one of the two singles off this record but yeah man this is just an interesting band I have only just not recently started listening to them and one of the reasons I wanted to give them, you know, pay some more attention to them is because I kept hearing that narrowhead, which is one of my favorite new acts, draw a lot of influence from deaf tones. And you can definitely hear it on the second single.

I'm going to have that as our outro track. But anyway, I think this version, if you want to call it new metal, because that's the tag that they got thrown onto them back in the 90s because this is right around the time that the bands like Corn, you know, had gotten that, that label was starting to get some traction and stuff. Deftones kind of wanted to distance themselves from that label, but we'll get into that a little bit more later. So corn was immediately thrown into new metal, that category.

I mean, isn't Limp Biscuit considered new metal? Yes. And that's the thing. That's the whole point, dude, is that, like, basically new metal just became this term to throw onto a band that, like, had metal elements to them. But then also it could be whatever the hell else you want, you know what I mean? Yeah, I wonder if Lincoln Park was considered New Metal, too. Oh, yeah, definitely.

But like, yeah, yeah. So it's like, those bands have, like, rap. Yeah, that seems exactly. Elements to it, you know? Exactly. That's, that's, that's, no, right? No. I gather that they have.

Maybe a little bit, a little bit. I mean, but yeah, basically it's like, hey, we've got a, we've got a guy that does some scratching on a turntable. Yeah, incubus. We're a new metal band. Yeah, incubus got thrown into to the new metal category as well, which is crazy. Yeah, I don't think. Corn is the only one of that bunch that I, that I would would say, you know, confidently say is new metal. Yeah.

Well, let's just, let's just jump right into it. So I've got an article here that I read. this was on the 25th anniversary of the record. So I guess that would have been 2022. LauderSound.com put out like a, you know, retrospective of the record. And the author of that article, Stephen Hill, wrote, in 1995, it would have felt pretty unique. But by the, well, he's referring to the first record, their first record. But by 1997, the emergence of debut albums,

from cold chambered limp biscuit, incubus, seven dust, snot and head. I have no clue what this is the last, snot and head. I don't know. It meant that the boundary, boundary, here you got, boundary free musical style was becoming codified, displaying trope's rules and a signature sound. New metal may have been in its infancy, but already the best in the genre could see the walls closing in. one album in having never wanted to be a part of the scene in the first place Deftones decided to make their escape from new metal and that's what this record is so they

they wanted to start you know just kind of doing their own thing and try to stand out a little bit from from the rest of the pack you know but so this is interesting cue Deftones is frequently referred to as the radiohead of metal and one of the reasons I think is because you remember when okay a computer came out like Tom York was so like I guess he was trying to to get away from the rock and roll yeah he didn't want to be yeah yeah and so they started they started doing stuff that that they thought wouldn't get them radio play yeah you know because after uh freak wait was is that what it was called I'm a freak creep yeah creep yeah creep yeah because creep just blew up you know and that was I think that

that was right before. I think after the success and popularity of creep, I think that's when he started to have that writer's block and the, yeah, those feelings of just wanting to escape that the rock and roll lifestyle. Yeah. So that's essentially where Def Tones is after their first record and getting thrown into this massive, like, you know,

under this massive umbrella with all these other bands, you know. It's like they wanted to start being a little bit of, more distinct. So I'm going to quote this article again. It says here, to help change their sound further, deaf tones embraced the most ethereal and cerebral elements of their influences, with Marino pointing to bands like Depeche Mode as an inspiration rather than any metal artist. Nice. Okay, let's just jump in here, Q. So I'm going to play the very next track on their record. Let's just dive right in Q. This song is called L. really hit you in a weird in a weird way okay all right expand on that yeah i got to hear you what do you

what do you mean by the way that it's the whispering yeah and the like it's just very uneasy feeling it's like a which is like a really fucked up asmr video or something like yeah it's funny because he said in that interview like like his melodies and the emotions that he brings out when he's singing is very like, what did you say? Like, not serene, but like, not the, that was supposed to be the, the calm part just opposed with the heavy, right, you know, instrumentation. Well, like his, I mean, it's just as dark, I think. Yeah, well, you know, it almost sounds like, you know, uneasy feeling.

It almost sounds like, you know, voices in your head kind of thing, like a schizophrenic person or something like that. Yeah, dude, they would be interesting to see live with, you know, whispering into the mic like that in a live show like in a really big auditorium right and then of course and the scream the scream yeah it's almost like a squeal just i mean just fantastic screams dude who's the screamer in the that's that's that's him dude all it's all him but yeah so here's no thank you this is this is interesting because we've we've heard this phrase before but this is something that i have always, you know, attributed to the pixies. But the loud, quiet, loud dynamic is, you know,

something that is sort of attributed to this, well, loud, loud, you know, yeah, it's the same idea, loud, soft dynamics, right? I'm reading from the Wikipedia page. The album was praised for its loud, soft dynamics, the flow of the tracks, Marino's unusual vocals, and the strong rhythm section grooves created by Cunningham and Chang. But yeah, that is, it's interesting because like, that's... I think the rhythm section grooves is what puts they, is what was putting them in the new label. I had the new metal.

Well, it's metal. Yeah, it's metal in general. Yeah. But yeah, the loud, quiet, loud, soft dynamic is what makes them so interesting. And that's, that's why his vocals are so compelling, you know, because, um, much like, you know, the soft vocals of a good shoegaze song, juxtaposed with the loud wall of sound guitar and stuff like that. You get that same kind of like dynamic, you know?

And Devtone certainly like flirts with shoegaze too in some songs. Anyway, all right, let's jump to the next track here. So this is going to be a completely different style, this next track. So, and I think this kind of showcases the versatility of the group. So here you go, we're going to jump to the very next track. This song is called Mascara. Cool song. Dare I say haunting?

Those lyrics, man. Yeah, oh yeah. Welcome to Mental King. Leaves you with a lot of questions. But that's part, I think that's part of the kind of like what he was saying with his lyrics and stuff like that in that intro clip. It's this weird, I think that plays to the dichotomy, the dynamic between like his soft, delivery but like the subject matter is also like very dark and kind of twisted and yeah and then along with the with the metal grooves and this came out in 97 97 yeah so think about grunge already

happened right grunge came and went i think new metal really took off by the time we were actually starting to listen to our own music i mean this this stuff was all over mtvd dude all of these groups. Deftones? Limpisket. Yeah. Yeah. Inkebis.

Right. Incubis, yeah. Yeah, I was, it was, I feel like it was right around the time you and I were old enough to start watching MTV. Total Request Live. And care about music is when these bands were blown up. Yeah. Now, I mean, for the record, dude, Incubis is not a new metal band.

Maybe some of their early stuff, but the time you get to make yourself in Morning View, which is when they were all over MTV with like, pardon me, which you were here. they had also kind of shifted into their own thing right but anyway um i want to do an episode on the atybis at one point dude that'd be great yeah i'm down for that uh anyway so i wanted to talk about the producer because this guy is a heavy hitter man and uh in the world of metal his name is terry date and when you look at his his uh his uh discography he produced massive amount of albums. Yeah, he produced basically

all the important Pantera records. So like Cowboys from Hell, vulgar display of power, far beyond driven. Screaming trees? The screaming trees. Prong. Hey, dude, let's not skip over Sir Mix a lot.

Sir Mix a lot. 1988, an album called Swas. That's funny. But yeah, sound garden. Helmet, too. Helmet, yeah, that's Ingebus. There's Inkebis, right? Limp biscuit.

So, like, he's, I mean, he was. He was busy. Stained. Dude, I forgot about Stained. That was another one of those kids. Yeah, here we go. Soul Fly. Ozzy, corn.

Whoa, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3. I guess he mixed that or something. Oh, that's great, man. That's cool. Yeah, anyway. So I didn't even realize at the time. I probably played the shit out of the game. Maybe he's the one who put the soundtrack together.

You know, picks the songs. Dream job. Slayer. Anyway. So, I mean, he did White Pony, which is one of Deaf Tones, probably most of all known record. The self-titled record. Anyway, big name, big name and metal that you may not have heard before,

but you are definitely familiar with his work. One thing I wanted to say here. So, you know, this record blew up and it was, you know, highly, highly ranked among like top best metal records of the year, best rock records of the year. Kerrang, which is a metal publication called, it metal at its best. And they said that the Sacramento Quartet, is that they're from California, by the way, are the tightest wound ball of sound and fury in modern metal, one huge setting burst

of pure distilled rage. I just, I want to know who the girl is on the cover. Well, you want to hear the story about it, cute? Because there's a story about it. Because it seems like a, it seems almost like a candid, like amateur shot, like a photo, you know. It is. It was. Like, okay. Yeah. So, uh, because I looked this up too.

The album cover was shot by the photographer Rick Kossack during a late night party in Seattle, where the band was recording. Upon seeing the candid photo of a woman, the band decided that they wanted to use it as the album cover. He was unsure who the woman was, so the band had to find and track her down to obtain permission. mission to use the photo, which she eventually granted. The woman appearing on the cover is Lisa M. Hughes, a friend of Stephen Carpenter. She has spoken out publicly about the cover for the first time during the album's 20th anniversary in 2017.

Marner has since expressed his dislike of the cover, calling it horrible. I mean, it's definitely salacious, you know? I guarantee you that album cover helped sell. Oh, hell, yeah, dude. especially for like teenagers oh yeah 100% but yeah you know that it's just kind of this literally just a photo that this guy snapped at some party in seattle you know i mean but it's kind of like you know the you know the kid from the nirvana record from never mind you know people track them down yeah and he's he was trying to like sue sue them yeah he's like preventing him from getting jobs

or something some i mean how the hell would anybody know you know what i mean exactly Exactly. Let's take a quick break. All right. So this is, we're jumping down to, toward the end of the record here. This song is called Die the Flu. That's my favorite one that we've heard. Oh, yeah?

Great track. Nice, man. Great track. Nice. Yeah, I was getting some Billy Corgan vibes. I can see that. I've always said that about Billy, dude, that he has that, like, sweet and sour. Yes.

Yeah, the very soft. Sickly kind of sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah, totally. I liked that song a lot, really good. All right, Q, so I got one more track for us here. Let me quote Kering again. So this article is actually their original review.

So this came out in 97 when these words were written. Around the Fur is metal at its best, brutal, raw, and unforgiving, unafraid to bear its soul and display its intelligence. Now, this last part cracked me up. Make space in your CD rack now. Man, we had some cool CD racks, dude. We did. I remember that was like a part of the decor of a house.

Yeah. Was your CD rack. You got to put those on display. And now it's all about the vinyl record shelf or whatever, which is funny because that's coming full circle, right? But yeah, I just thought that was funny. because yeah that dates it CD rack you know anyway all right Q we got a little more track for us here

so here's something that doesn't happen anymore um you remember when you would speaking of CDs you'd be listening to a CD and it would end and you would just go about your day and then yeah 10 minutes later you suddenly hear another song start playing and you're like what the heck I've stumbled on the hidden track I've stumbled onto a secret that nobody else is supposed to hear yeah um so I'm gonna play

the hidden track off of their last track called MX. So that is why this track is 37 minutes and 18 seconds long, because at the 32 minute mark, so right almost at the end, there is a hidden track called Demone. Wow. Okay, that's pretty cool, actually, that they left the silence in it, even for the streaming on Spotify.

Is 30 minutes of silence? Well, it's funny is because in between at the 19 minute and 32 second mark, there is a track, if you want to call it, called bong hit. So there's a bong hit that happens. Literally a bong hit. I think so, yeah. I like the 32 second. Well, Travis, I can tell you if it's a bong hit because I've done a few of those my day.

I mean, I've heard, I know what it sounds like, you know. But, yeah. So, you know. You'll hear a bong hit, and then 14 minutes later, you'll hear Demone, which is actually a pretty cool track. All right, let's hear it. Which is, hey, you know, that's why we say you've got to listen to the whole record, and you've got to let it keep playing. Or you're going to miss the hidden tracks. I remember the first time I heard the hidden track on the Kings of Leon record.

Hmm. Was it a wicker chair? Or no. I think it was at the end of youth and young manhood, I think. You think. Yeah, I thought it was a wicker chair. That one may have been on the actual record. Talahina Sky.

Talahina Sky. That was a great track too, man. Holy moly. Dude, did you hear that new track that Tyler sent us? There's a new Kings of Convenience track. Kings of Leon track, and it's actually pretty great. I didn't listen to it. Cool.

I'll bring it for our next watch you heard. Okay. We can have that as the intro song because it's fantastic, dude. And it's actually gotten pretty dang excited. about some new kings of Leon. All right. It's different, man. It's good.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we played that track on the episode that we did on Youth and Young Manhood. I bet you we did. It feels like something we would do. Play the hidden track. Yeah. Yeah, and that was like episode, what, three or four or five? Something like that.

One of the early episodes. Yeah. All right. So here we go. I'm going to close this out with the hidden track off the record. Again, this song is called. Demone. You can hear

how influential these guys were. I'm thinking like the third wave emo. Yeah. Must have been influenced by these guys

totally. Like Emory and bands like that. Especially Emery, man, with the, with the two, you know,

the really nice legit singing voice. The soft, loud dynamic. So, yeah. Like me without you, maybe.

Mm-hmm. With his vocal stylings. Undoing a David Wright just to sneak them in there. But let me ask you this, Q, because I think you hear it in this song. What do you think about Muse? Yeah. Man, I haven't thought about them in forever. That would be an interesting episode.

If we did, well, what was it, absolution or whatever? Absolution, yeah. That would be interesting. I remember that record, dude. Listening to that for the first time, I was like, man, this is different. It just felt different. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember getting really, being really, really into that. And I remember they had a really awesome website at the time. Man, what was that one song? It got pretty big. Time is running out. From that record? Yeah, time is running out. Dude, we should do that record.

Anyway. Snaps. Yep. So the reason I'm saying that is because this is actually on the Wikipedia page for this record. The English rock band Muse have cited Devtones as a root influence, like core influence. And sometimes you use the riff to Head Up as an outro to their song, New Born, during live performances. And Head Up is the track that Max Cavalera provided guitar and vocals on. Yeah, I'm curious about that particular record, Absolution.

What were the singles on that record? The time is running out. Oh, geez, man. We can't. We'd be down to like slim pickings, dude. Because there were six singles off of that record. Hysteria was probably a single. 15 songs, six of which were singles.

Stockholm syndrome, time is running on. Hysteria. Sing for absolution. Apocalypse, please. Butterflies and hurricanes. Remember butterflies and hurricanes? That song was awesome, dude. Lots of good songs on that.

We have to listen to that. Oh, man. Okay. Anyway. Very Tommy York. and Tom Yorkian. Yeah, yeah. I think Muse and Radiohead,

I want to say like a lot of people who have been Muse fans forever, were kind of upset when Radiohead got all the fame earlier on because I want to say Muse has been around for as long as Radiohead or longer. Yeah, they've been around a while. They're so similar in their sound. They formed in 94. Yeah.

Dang, I'm curious. Man, they got a lot of records. And I mean I'm curious about their early stuff. All right. Anyways, that's a tangent. Showbiz.

I mean, I think we listened to stuff. I remember Muscle Museum was cool. Remember that song? Muscle Museum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. But that came out in 99. Surely they had some singles or EPs or something like that that came out before that.

I'm just looking at Spotify. Anyway, they're still putting that stuff, Kim. All right. So that was it. That was a very, very brief bird's eye view of Deftone's Q because, I mean, like I said, they're, they're iconic. There's been, you know, like I just started listening to these guys, which is, again, it's one of those fans that's like, well, why did I sleep on these guys back in the day? You know, my like journey through music, I don't think I would have been, I don't think I was listening to bands like this. You know what I mean?

I don't think I was, I didn't have a tolerance for the screaming yet back then. Queens of the Stone Age. That was the songs for the death was our dip into the waters. 100%. And finally realizing that the water was just fine. Well, I mean, yeah. Can you say that though? Because I can safely say that Queens of the Stone Age was when I dipped a toe and just kind of kept waiting around.

It just got deeper and deeper. But you were like, this is a little. little too hot for me and you kind of removed your foot. Actually, I was like, you know, this is okay. And then I kept trying to go, you know, take a few steps down deeper into the water and I'm like, hang on now. I'm not ready for this yet. Nope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Def Tonsky. Maybe you could listen to them. Yeah, I should definitely get a cue up. What's interesting about the kind of the grunge revival that's happening right now is that, and we've talked about this before, that they are, because we're so far removed from the entire decade,

bands like Nearhead are pulling in bits of smashing pumpkins, bits of Allison Change, change, Alice in Chains, and then, you know, bands like Deftown. So it's like the whole thing is just sort of like mashed together into this awesome, you know, sound, right? And definitely you can hear the influence on the vocal stylings of Nearhead and a bunch of other groups like that, a lot of which we've covered.

Trauma Ray is one of them. Soul blind. That's one I'm thinking of soul blind. There's just, you know, all those bands that are putting out that 90s kind of tinged music, you can hear bits of deaf tones in there. They're definitely influenced. And that's, you know, probably because their parents listen to deaf tones, which is really interesting to think about, along with all those other 90s bands. Anyway, Fleshwater, remember them?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right, Q, well, I'm going to close this out. We're going to have an outro track, I should say. It's going to be a song of the second single off of this record that I think sounds a lot like narrowhead. It's called Be Quiet and Drive Far Away. So that's going to close this out. So a couple weeks, we'll do our March, what you heard.

episode. You know, stay tuned for that, our monthly mixtape. And then what are we doing after this? Do we have an album? I don't think we've decided yet. You know, have to mix things up a bit. So I feel like after a Def Tones episode. It's tough, man, because we have a, you know, we only have 12 albums total for the whole

year. That's right, man. I don't know. We're going to have to think on this. So far, we've done Dinosaur Jr. We've done Cocktoe Twins, Def Tones. Okay. Well, yeah, we've got some ideas. We'll figure it out. And we'll have, we'll have an idea, better idea by the next episode. All right, Q. So again, we're going to close out with the track, Be Quiet, Drive, Far Away by Deftones of their 97 record around the fur. Be sure to check out the Pantheon Podcast Network for more great music-related podcasts. That's pantheonpodcast.com. Thanks as always for listening. My name is Travis. I'm going on.

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