Friday the 29th: Deftones - Prayers/Triangles

     For this Deftones fan, there's some good news and some bad news accompanying the release of the bands latest single this past week. Or, I should say, some really great news and some pretty minor bad news. (Spoiler: it's mostly a win.)

     The good/really great news is simple: new Deftones that, based on the single (hang on just one second for that), sounds like it'll be another solid Deftones outing. The minor bad news is that forthcoming new album Gore still isn't the fabled lost record Eros, the band's last with late bassist Chi Cheng. We may yet get a chance to hear that album, but I figure that each other album released in the meantime lowers that chance a little bit more.

     Lucky for me then that, like I said, Gore is sounding like it'll be pretty good, if lead single "Prayers/Triangles" is anything to judge the rest of the record by. It's nothing especially mind-blowing -- Deftones haven't written a jazz fusion concept album or anything -- but it's solid-sounding Deftones. Synthy-ambienty guitars in the verses, big crunchy choruses, Chino throughout... yeah, it's definitely Deftones. Check it out, and get stoked for Gore's April release.

Deftones - Smile

     If you're at all a fan of the Deftones, you're no doubt at least familiar with the story of their late bassist Chi Cheng and the unfinished album Eros that the band was working on when Cheng was involved in a serious car accident back in 2008.

     Cheng sadly passed away last April, but yesterday the band chose to commemorate the anniversary of his death by releasing one of the the songs from the still-unreleased Eros. Who knows whether we'll ever hear the rest of the record, or in what format we might hear it, so for now let's celebrate the life of a talented musician and key part of one of the defining heavy bands for my generation by listening to "Smile" from the "lost" album Eros.

Song of the Day: Deftones - Bloody Cape

     It's only been like a week since the last time I did a Deftones song, but since you've by now no doubt heard of the passing of original bassist Chi Cheng it seems to me that I can't choose a song by any other band tonight. And even though their last couple of records with new bass played Sergio Vega have been great, I've got to go with something Chi played on for today's song.

Heavy TO Pit Report - Part 1: The Bands

     I told you I'd have some thoughts from Heavy TO, and here they are, even if it did take me a week to write them down. And I have so many thoughts that I think I'm going to make this a two-parter. In this first installment, I'm going to go through each of the bands we actually payed attention to (ie: the ones we went to see) and give little baby reviews of their sets. I'm not going to try and remember set lists or anything like that (mostly because it's 2012 and the Internet does that shit for me), I'm just going to give you my impressions of each band's performance. So let's go!