SOLD OUT: Deftones

Since their inception, Grammy-winning alternative band Deftones have quietly been pursuing two paths, delivering songs defined by churning, double-fisted aggression while also quietly testing the boundaries of music by incorporating elements of psychedelia and shoegaze. Their platinum-certified, Billboard chart-topping 2000 album White Pony earned raves, but the group has only gotten more experimental since then, evincing a clear restlessness with convention and repetition. Picking up where 2010's… Show more lauded Diamond Eyes left off, the group's seventh album, Koi No Yokan is their boldest yet. Both ferociously melodic and dizzyingly expansive, the album moves from pensive to pulverizing – often in the space of a single song.

For Koi No Yokan, the group reunited with producer Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on Diamond Eyes. As they did for that record, the band set a rigorous daily work schedule. "In the past, one of us would write something, record it, and then weeks -- or even months -- later, someone else would come along and add to it. We had totally lost that communal vibe. This time, all of the songs started with just the five of us together in a room, playing," explains Chino Moreno. Those close collaborations led to a more deliberate drive and cohesive final product.

Moreno insists the record's title, a Japanese term for the notion of love at first sight, is not meant to be taken literally. "It's really just trying to get at those tingling feelings that everybody gets from time to time. I just wanted to give people a descriptive emotion to work off of when approaching the record." More than anything else, that's what comes across in Koi No Yokan -- a sense of euphoria. With their forward-thinking, genre-agnostic rock, Deftones ride strange waves of inspiration to always-engrossing, always-surprising ends. The songs are as eerie and ghostly and glimmering as the Northern Lights – both strange and strangely beautiful, and firmly positioned at the intersection of blunt force and haunting elegance. Koi No Yokan is Deftones at their finest. Experience it live this March!

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