DEFTONES - Deftones LP

Label: Maverick

It's been three years since the Deftones' last album, the anthemic and deeply atmospheric White Pony, and they've spent most of that time working on this, their eponymous fourth album.

Usually, when a band fails to come up with a proper title by this stage, it's a demonstration of a lack of ideas, or a signal of a new beginning.

Here, however, it seems to be merely a rejection of the industry conventions they so despise, given that guitarist Stef Carpenter recently claimed that the band itself would be nameless if they were allowed.

And as far as ideas are concerned, Chino Moreno and co are emphatically not running out of steam. And that's without even mentioning the histrionics of swooping classic single 'Minerva'. This is perhaps the most rewarding Deftones experience thus far, and should finally translate their highly poetic, thoroughly violent sound into sales. A frighteningly good blood-soaked fest of an album.