As it happens, I spent most of my adolescent years cocooned in an echo chamber of progressive rock and metal, where “emo” was arguably the worst adjective you could use, right after “pop”, until one band from Sacramento, USA, came along and changed everything. Albums “Around the Fur” (1997) and “White Pony” (2000) both hit a home run and became their most acclaimed endeavors – and for a bloody good reason, too! These masterpieces really made me question my musical prejudices by opening a view into a whole new world of alternative metal aesthetics. Alas, the next DEFTONES full-length, “Saturday Night Wrist,” released on October 31 st, 2006, didn’t really impress me, except for a couple of songs. It has remained the album that I’ve overlooked the most in their discography to this day. To be honest, it is quite a fractured endeavor, a mixed bag with spectacular highs and massive lows, and it still seems to divide the band’s fans: they either love it or hate it, with not many neutral voices in between. I haven’t listened to it in years, save for those few highlights in the tracklist, so let’s see what it sounds like now as it’s celebrating its 30th anniversary. I mean, the album cannot be all that bad since one of its songs gave the artistic alias to this one crazy Australian trap-metal sensation. As far as I could recall, the album was poignantly raw, loud, and chaotic, but it also had some of those silky moments. Sadly, “Saturday Night Wrist” was also the band’s last official studio album to feature the band’s original bassist, Chi Cheng. That fateful car accident in 2008 cast him aside, leaving him disabled until his untimely death in 2013.
So, while some dubbed the album extremely disjointed right off the bat, these somewhat risky and daring production choices also gave us a few genuine treats. That is, if you were into the strong trip-hop and dream-pop flourishes in songs such as “Cherry Waves” and “Xerces.” I guess you could also count that haunting post-rock instrumental known as “the Konami code song,” the title of which I’m not even going to try to write here, because I never get it right. Rumor has it that the code was a real cheat code for Konami games. (Well, I should have known, given that I did play some of those vintage Konami games on NES back in the day, but I had to look it up on the Internet…) These atmospheric bangers are still among the album’s highlights. In general, their softer cuts, like the lead single, “Hole in the Earth,” seem to have more replay value than those angrier riffages. The album did get favorable reviews, but the heavier songs pale in comparison with the band’s vintage punch-ups from those earlier albums. Take the song, “Rats! Rats! Rats!,” for instance: the atmospheric middle section sounds nice; otherwise the song is actually quite annoying. And speaking of annoyances, the song that seems to divide the fans the most, “Pink Cellphone,” featuring Annie Hardy on additional vocals, is an electronic experiment not very far from the recent works of, say, PUSCIFER, but back in 2006, metalheads were strongly opposed to listening to something like this, especially on a DEFTONES outing. In my opinion, the song works nicely as a breather between two angsty riffers, among which “Combat” is the better one, hands down. It’s true, however, that there’s not much on offer by way of composition, let alone the lyrics, in this weird electro track. Just listen to what Hardy is going on about; I double dare you.
Toward the end of the album, the songs fall somewhere in between the atmospheric vignettes and those few beefy riffages. First, “Kimdracula” is a pretty standard DEFTONES banger, and I reckon the Australian trap-metal sensei, KIM DRACULA, has nicked his stage name from this song. By “standard,” I mean there’s nothing particularly spectacular in the song, but it’s nowhere near as annoying as that rat-themed song either. The same applies to “Rivière” as well. On those previous two DEFTONES albums, these album cuts would have been regarded as filler tracks, but in this selection, they rank among the better ones, so I guess it says something about something. Finally, my edition of the album ends with the crispy, trip-hop-esque cover rendition of the vintage CARS hit, “Drive.” I’m not exactly sure we needed such a thing, but to give credit where it’s due, this version is pretty decent.
So, what’s my verdict on this DEFTONES album after all these years? I have not revisited the album much, and if truth be told, I doubt that I will be revisiting “Saturday Night Wrist” very often in the future either. My opinion of the album hasn’t changed that much over the past 20 years. The best tracks still sound good, but the worst riffers have not really gained more appeal by way of nostalgia in all this time. What I would, and probably will, do is compile a playlist of the album’s best cuts – that is, all those experimental and atmospheric tracks – and listen exclusively to them. I reckon it’s a small wonder that we even got these few beautiful gems in the first place; the making of this album was a highly stressful process that almost broke the band, what with all the drugs and vocalist Chino Moreno‘s failing marriage taking their toll. Add Cheng‘s tragic fate to the mix, and it baffles the mind how DEFTONES bounced back from all this with the haunting masterpiece of an album, “Diamond Eyes,” only 4 years later. In retrospect, “Saturday Night Wrist” seems like a transitional album that needed to be made. It’s no match for the band’s previous achievements, but despite its highly fractured nature, it has its moments.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Hole in the Earth
- Rapture
- Beware
- Cherry Waves
- Mein (feat. Serj Tankian)
- U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B,Select,Start
- Xerces
- Rats! Rats! Rats!
- Pink Cellphone (feat. Annie Hardy)
- Combat
- Kimdracula
- Rivière
- Drive (feat. Shaun Lopez) – Bonus Track
Lineup
Chino Moreno – vocals, rhythm guitars
Stephen Carpenter – lead guitars
Chi Cheng – bass
Frank Delgado – keyboards, samples
Abe Cunningham – drums
Label
Maverick Records
