stoned and strangely sensual, when he isn't shredding his tonsils. The band brings the requisite brutality, but this album delivers chills when it creeps past the margins of modern post-Korn heavy music: the spooky spaghetti-western drones that hover like vultures over "Death Blow," the space-is-the-place liftoff of "Minerva" and the ambient doomscape "Lucky You," which might be worth an approving smirk from the Aphex Twin. Just when new metal seemed utterly played out, Deftones blows open the possibilities.

GREG KOT
(From RS 923, May 29, 2003)