Oh my God, after all the talks Glassjaw and OhJohnNo and I have had, how could I have forgotten Deftones?
I remember just being completely floored when I first heard this song. I thought, "Wait, is he actually screaming THAT much?" See, metal guys, especially the Death and Doom varieties, "know" how to scream. You can drop your voice out in the same way you would if you were singing falsetto, and in this way you can protect your vocal cords and also attain a lot more grit in your screaming voice. But here's Chino Moreno, and for all practical purposes he is just screaming his mind out over a riff that shouldn't nearly be as inspirational as it is. When Stephen Carpenter and the late Chi Cheng drop into the breakdown, though, that's when it becomes apparent that nobody could do it quite like the Deftones.
On the other hand, here's a song that still gives me chills, even though I pretty much hate everything else this band has ever put out:
I imagine it's sometimes a challenge for drummers to flex their muscles artistically. Think about it: Pianos, you have 88 keys and a wide range of dynamics to express yourself with. Guitars, you have six strings with 15 good frets a-piece and often many more if you have a good guitar or a decent amount of skill with it. Once you start getting into synthesizers and sequencers, you have a limitless musical arsenal to evoke the feelings you want to evoke.
But drummers have, all superfluous percussion and Neil Peart sized kits aside, about five good drums and only so much dynamic range to make music with. Very rarely will you hear a drum solo that isn't entirely about drum wankery. I feel like Brian Chase does admirably here, using his drums to really express the emotion in this track in a way that a lesser drummer couldn't, and in a way that the already impressive skills of Nick Zinner on guitar and Karen Orzlelek on vocals couldn't do on their own. The production by Dave Sitek, by the way, is what accounts for that gigantic guitar sound, the same one that Max Martin presumably ripped off in the Kelly Clarkson hit "Since U Been Gone". All in all, a massive song that gets all kinds of respect from me, even if I don't usually enjoy grimy, trashy art-punk bands like other hipsters like me should.