During spring semester of my first year at Quinnipiac University, I would spend three hours a night doing album reviews with my best friend from Bates College on the phone.
We would each pick out two albums listen to and rate the songs on all four of them. This helped us have a more subjective outlook on music while broadening our perspective to include more than just rap and pop.
One day, I decided to pick an album my friend from home had been dying for me to listen to and review. This album was none other than “Around the Fur,” by hit metal band Deftones.
My best friend and I reviewed it and it was nothing short of greatness.
Oct. 27 marks the 27th anniversary of Deftones’ second studio album, “Around the Fur.” The album kicked the band’s career into overdrive. It introduced specific sound and rhythm to better highlight their unique style of music, allowing for a more constructed and deserved fanbase.
“Around The Fur” is one of the most influential albums made by Deftones, as it allowed the band to be considered mainstream in the nu-metal/alternative metal genre. Their fanbase was ever-growing due to the initial exposure of fans to their debut studio album “Adrenaline,” making the fans crawl back to their doorstep for more.
But how did they get to this point?
Deftones started in Sacramento, California, with vocalist Chino Moreno, lead guitarist Stephen Carpenter and drummer Abe Cuningham. Since high school, the band has practiced in Carpenter’s garage.
In 1988, the band began performing with their new bassist, Chi Cheng. To get themselves out there, they would perform in small and local clubs and bars. Their style was more influenced by pop, punk and rock, as they were still discovering themselves.
Personally, my favorite songs are “Hump” and “Some People,” as they remind me of Deftones’ current style, except with a less eerie feel to it compared to some of the songs in “Around The Fur.”
After playing on a local level in Los Angeles, the band had hopes of getting a record deal after an audience member watching the performance showed the band’s demo tape to a personal contact: the pop queen, Madonna.
Deftones would immediately get signed to Maverick Records, which, through affiliation, helped them acquire a fanbase for their first album, “Adrenaline,” in 1995.
After the release of “Adrenaline,” Deftones traveled to small venues around the country and headlined bands such as Pantera, White Zombie and most notoriously, KISS. In 1996, KISS appeared at a concert for the first time since their breakup in the 1980s.
Many fans wanted nothing more than to see KISS, so the fans weren’t too happy when an up-and-coming band with a recent debut album and a small fan base entered the stage.
This small moment in Deftone’s history brought a massive fanbase to their doorstep. The pairing of these two bands challenged the landscape of rock, metal, and alternative. Hearing a band claiming to be metal in the 90s against a band whose metal has been around since the 70s had a huge cultural impact on the way people saw these genres.
To touch upon “Adrenaline” briefly, it’s overall a pretty solid album. With hits such as “Bored and 7 Words” it was obvious that the band was gaining a fanbase and gaining it fast. The only question to ask was what was next?
Deftones was criticized for still not having a distinct style to their music following the release of “Adrenaline,” which prompted the release of “Around the Fur” in 1997.
Chino explained that the album was meant to feel ugly on the outside yet beautiful and oddly soft on the inside, like fur.
The album solidified Deftones’s style, giving each song a rock, metal and grunge-like sound. Songs like “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” both hit the top ten in the Billboard Hot 100.
If I had to choose my top three songs on this album, it would be “MX,” “Lotion” and “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away).”
Everything about the latter is just amazing. The guitar riff is extraordinary, not only on the album but overall. I’ve never heard a riff similar to the one in this song. When I saw it live a couple of years back with my father, hearing everyone scream, “And I don’t care where just far!” was just an amazing experience overall.
Because of this album, Deftones also gained opportunities to promote their song on the “Late Night Show with Conan O’ Brian,” where they performed “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away).” They performed over one hundred tours all around the world. The record would go platinum over a decade later, selling over a million copies in the last 20 years. It later won a Grammy in 1988 for Best Metal Performance with its song “Be Quiet” and “Drive (Far Away).”
This album helped to further kickstart the band’s success. It’s not only the bands’ favorite but also many of their fans listened to it. If you ever have the chance, I would definitely recommend giving “Around The Fur” a listen.
