The Deftones & The Right Bowl Of Cereal, by Paul Shirley

The latest album by the Deftones, called Diamond Eyes, isn’t a return to form, or an exploration of new soundscapes, or the work of a band seeking a new direction.  Instead, it’s what Deftones albums usually are.  It’s heavy.  It’s loud.  It’s surprisingly melodic.

But most of all, it’s good.

And it probably won’t be sufficiently appreciated.

The Deftones aren’t new to popular music; they’ve now released six albums, making them ancient sequoias in a music culture that celebrates fast-growing poplars.  Their debut, Adrenaline, was released in 1995.  The follow-up, Around The Fur, brought with it three important cultural contributions: two songs –  “My Own Summer” and “Be Quiet And Drive” — that expressed every iteration of despondency and rage ever felt by a human being, and an album cover that has sent more teenage boys to the Kleenex box than the might-be nipple slip on Liz Phair’s “Exile In Guyville”.

From there, the ‘Tones got artsy, conjuring up what is widely accepted as their masterwork with 2000’s White Pony.  Two more albums of atmospheric scream rock followed: a self-titled 2003 release and Saturday Night Wrist in 2006.

I knew very little about the Deftones before I stuck out my thumb and warily climbed aboard shortly before the release of White Pony.  My timing was impeccable, and not just because White Pony is so good.  Thanks to run-ins with enigmatic girls and a penchant for self-doubt, I was just beginning to need the therapeutic powers of metal, nu-metal, and alt-metal.  But while I would soon be found singing the praises of Tool, Filter, and Nine Inch Nails, I rarely thought, “Sh*t, tongue-tied around a girl again.  Oh well, at least there’s the Deftones when I get home.”

The band seemed too good to be true.  I didn’t think I could count on them for the long-term; I thought a descent into mediocrity was inevitable.  I worried that I’d eventually get tired of them.  They were too workmanlike.  Satisfying, no doubt, but not anything that would have sprung to mind if I’d been asked to name a favorite.

In other words, the Deftones were almost exactly like Wheat Chex.

My history with breakfast cereal is much longer than my history with music.  With the exception of the odd packet of Quaker’s Instant Oatmeal, (“Goddammit, who took all the Maple & Brown Sugar?”) my childhood mornings were spent staring at the backs of boxes of cereal as I chewed groggily through their milk-soaked contents.  Whatever collection of grain-based shapes was in my bowl was probably a member of a healthful cereal clan; Bran Flakes, Cheerios, and Post Toasties were stalwarts of the top shelf in the cabinet that served as the pantry in my parents’ kitchen.   Trix and Lucky Charms were a part of my life only in television commercials that featured sugar-tweaked ten-year-olds chasing rabbits and leprechauns over cartoon hill and through pixellated dale.

Despite the mundane nature of the available options, I couldn’t get enough cereal, in part because my parents allowed me only one bowl each morning.  Its scarcity honed my decision-making process.  No trial and error. One pick, and one pick only.  (This same scarcity led me to grumble, at least once a week, that “someday, when I grow up, I’ll eat as much cereal as I want.”  In a related story, the pasta shelf in my very own big-boy kitchen often becomes a secondary cereal repository.)

A keen sense of self-awareness was paramount.  I needed to know exactly what I was in the mood for, or I risked suffering through a soggy bowl of Rice Krispies when, really, I probably wanted Shredded Wheat.

In my teenage years, I began to notice that one group of cereals never seemed to let me down.  The Chex family – Corn, Rice, Wheat – wasn’t flashy, but it was always satisfying.  Most important:  I never got tired of it.

Eventually, I was forced to dampen my enthusiasm for the Chexes.  In college, I realized that Rice Chex doesn’t have much taste.  At 24, I figured out that Corn Chex is eerily similar to the chaff that is spewed out the back of a combine.

But Wheat Chex, oh, Wheat Chex.

Twenty-five years after I made your acquaintance, I’m still smitten.  You’re crunchy for just long enough.  You’re dense, but not oppressively so.   And you’re sweet enough to keep me coming back, but not loaded with so much corn syrup that I immediately crash like a Beta version from download.com.

Maybe you’re not as spectacular as Cracklin’ Oat Bran, or as talented as Raisin Nut Bran, but you’re certainly more consistent than the hit-or-miss Honey Bunches of Oats and decidedly more orally pleasing than ubiquitous granola.

Wheat Chex has proven itself to be the blue chip of my cereal universe.

The Deftones provoke a similar response. It’s true that they’ll never usurp the lair that Tool has carved into my heart.  And they’ll probably never dominate my iPod like Nine Inch Nails.  But there’s plenty of room on my shelf.  Sevendust was always too inconsistent.  Ultraspank broke up too soon.  And System Of A Down never was all that good.

Unfortunately for the Deftones, their status in the world of music is analogous to another aspect of the Wheat Chex existence: people who know them like them, but that population isn’t expanding particularly fast.  The hipster-steeped world of music critique – eager to embrace the latest indie-pop/electronic act and quick to dismiss anything smacking of aggression – seems to have cast aside the heavier music of bands like the Deftones, thinking it too similar to Shinedown, Hellyeah, and Disturbed.

For lead singer Chino Moreno and his bandmates, such ignorance must be frustrating.  I would argue that the music they’ve been making for the last fifteen years takes more talent, is more aurally stimulating, and is more worthwhile than anything Vampire Weekend will ever do.

But no one is asking me, really.  And I’m not sure I want them to.  Because, for people like me, who, like a battered wife on a fourth date, have relented and have warily decided that the Deftones can be trusted – that they aren’t about to start experimenting with sitar-based drone metal or depart on an ill-fated exploration into Gospelcore – the critical disregard for the Deftones is a chance to have something for ourselves.

It’s a chance for us to walk past the throngs hovering over the Honey Nut Cheerios, the Raisin Bran, and the Frosted Mini-Wheats to find, waiting in its not-quite-iconic red and white box, the Wheat Chex we knew we wanted all along.

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