Part lullaby, part meat grinder, and all balls, White Pony finds Deftones at an unusual moment for critics and fans alike.
2000 marked a different time for music. Andre 3000 and Big Boi professed profuse apologies to Ms. Jackson, everything about Radiohead was in its right place, and Johnny Cash let us know that he simply would not back down. And then along came White Pony, brought to us by (the) Deftones, a nu metal band supreme with two previous albums and a tendency to cover songs by Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, and The Cure.
A startling blend of violence and beauty, the ambient aggression of White Pony resembles a collection of love songs for murder victims. Frontman Chino Moreno either croons or screams his overtures, declaring '...soon I'll let you go...', or affirming '...when you're ripe, you'll bleed out of control...' in a manner that evokes seduction and peril all in the same breath. Repeated references to 'meat,' 'teeth,' 'cavity,' 'taste,' and 'claws' throughout the album further sustain its impending fear of something dangerous and visceral lurking beneath the surface. Even more so, White Pony seems enamored with this threat and incapable of breaking from its alluring grasp.
This moth and the flame relationship brings me to the title 'White Pony,' which itself begs some interpretation. 'White horse' has been utilized as a reference to cocaine, and dreaming of a white horse for some has been construed as an allegory for passion, sexual needs, and intellectual strength. So maybe both of these possible interpretations exist here, but in a warped Deftones dimension. While none of the songs operate in a 'coke or sex' binary paradigm, White Pony nonetheless appears to fixate on the addiction, the fetish, the paranoia, and the captivation of some kind of object.
In fact, most, if not all of the songs direct their focus to an unnamed 'you' - doing something, changing something, progressing to some new level, all with this objectified 'you' character. For me, it was as if 'White Pony' represented the means (coke, sex, knives, whatever) as well as the end (addiction, torture, abduction, you know, the usual) sublimated throughout. And at the center of it all resides the objectified 'you' as the passenger, or in the driver seat, but always present. Further, as if to raise the stakes, 'White Pony' seems to possess the need for some form of vitality (transpose, or stop your life), punctuated by the sound of a beating heart at the close of the album.
However, White Pony is by no means perfect. The album dragged a bit for me towards the end of the first side, and all of the themes I discussed above permeate and pervade the album beyond saturation, depending on the listener's mood. Plus, Chino's singing style, while definitive, may be an acquired taste for some. So while no one will ever blame White Pony for its cheery disposition, for me at least, brutality has never sounded so sexy.
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