4) Gore (2016)

Forr all the talk about the difficulty Stephen Carpenter had with relegating himself to playing on an album that he didn’t feel was particularly metal, this album is probably the best they’ve sounded in terms of merging their ’80s influences of The Smiths, The Cure and Depeche Mode with the metal of Meshuggah that Carpenter prefers, sometimes even on the same song. It sounds like the band pushing back against each other might have paid off. Songs like “Prayers/Triangles” and “Hearts/Wires” show it both in their song titles and in the music. You can see where Carpenter might have had misgivings, but his guitars elevate the songs that aren’t heavy, like “Phantom Bride.”

3) Diamond Eyes (2010)

With bassist Chi Cheng languishing in a coma following a 2008 car accident, Deftones made the decision to move on with Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega filling in. Given the middling quality of Saturday Night Wrist and the state the band must have been in, many had modest expectations for the album. Instead, it was an instant classic from a band that had could have merely rested on their laurels. The title track is one of the best songs the band’s written, marrying their heavy side with a melodic chorus. And “Rocket Skates” and “You’ve Seen the Butcher” pay tribute to the noise-rock grooves the band grew up on. And the album has a flow to it that’s been hard to

2) White Pony (2000)

This was where Deftones came into their own. Where Around the Fur may be their most consistently heavy album aside from their debut, this found them getting more ambient and melodic than they’d been before, and was their most disparate album today. Just about the whole album is classic, with “Change (In the House of Flies),” “Back to School,” “Digital Bath” and “Knife Prty” sticking out among them. The there’s “Passenger,” a thrilling song in which Chino and Tool’s Maynard James Keenan trade off lines. It’s a high water mark that the band has come close to topping, but hasn’t quite done yet.

1) Around The Fur (1997)

This was the album that made the Deftones stick around. Instead of releasing a slightly advanced version of Adrenaline, they got rid of most of the rap-metal stuff that defined the first album, led off with a banger (“My Own Summer”), kept the intensity up, but then included “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away),” a song that was pretty much more Smashing Pumpkins than Korn. It was here that they started to show their left of the dial influences, and it’s acceptance paved the way for their further experimentation.