Deftones’ Career-Defining Album “White Pony” Turns 20


Success has a way of messing with a good band. First world problems compared to the millions of bands that never make it, sure. However, so often when an emerging band that has fast become a genre leader, big corporate record labels can foul up the flow. This was almost the case of White Pony by Deftones, and the case where the hype was lived up to by pencil pushers, bean counters, and greed almost wrecked the game. White Pony is the band’s pivotal third album, where they built off the stylistic changes that came in with Around The Fur (Maverick) and pushed their sound further than before. In the process, they severed themselves far from the Nu-Metal wave that was exploding at the time and firmly created a new camp of “Deftones Music” as a category. That is, until, the label got in their business later on.Continue reading


ALBUM REVIEW: Omega Infinity – Solar Spectre


If a band consists of members from Ne Obliviscaris and Todtgelichter, it’s a fair bet that the results will be 1) bloody dark, 2) as mad as a sheep in a tree. Sure enough, Omega Infinity provides all of this, with the frosted vocal of the Aussies’ mystical Xenoyr tangling with the musical machinations of ‘lichter drummer and keyboardist Tentakel P for debut album Solar Spectre (Season of Mist).Continue reading


Steven Wilson – To The Bone


Genius is a gangly word to throw around, and at Ghost Cult, we don’t use it lightly, or all that often. For Steven Wilson, that tag has applied more often than not to his output in his thirty-year-plus career. As he pulls further and further away from his progressive metal heyday; he runs headlong to return to his early roots in the 1980s of No Man Is An Island/No-Man (look it up if you don’t know it) project. His loose goal going in was to make a pop-rock album in the vein of lightly prog-flavored favorites of his youth such as Peter Gabriel, Tears For Fears, XTC, and others. He achieved this on To The Bone (Caroline International), without any pretense you might associate with an artist making a choice like this.Continue reading