When Rage Against The Machine released The Battle Of Los Angeles, the critics hailed it as one of the best albums of 1999.

When Nine Inch Nails gave us The Fragile, even more critics placed it on a pedestal with a view rivaling that of the Space Needle in Seattle.

While they are both excellent albums, they somehow disappointed me. Either my expectations were too high, or they ventured too far from their set pattern, they didn't clear the bar.

Can The Deftones?

To put it simply, this critic's hailing it as the best album of 2000, and possibly some of the best metal ever conceived. This includes Metallica and Ozzy, folks. With their junior effort, they pulled out all the stops on their White Pony, releasing different songs on differently colored copies (this review is over the red copy, for those of you keeping score), enhancing the CD, and going through a concert where the venue was hotter than hellfire to give the new stuff to their fans.

Metal's not dead, you just have to listen to Chino's banshee vocals on "Elite", where some will interpret it as fair warning to all who sit upon their thrones. "When you're ripe, you'll bleed out of control." The music perfectly fits the scene, best described as "controlled chaos". They're doing what they do best, folks.

The opening drumbeats to "RX Queen" and "Feiticeira" are workings that Static-X would kill for, and both lead to metaphoric lyrics, but in the classic words of so many lyricists, "You decide what they mean." Chino's lyrics can take a number of paths, it's up to the listener to decide which trail to take.

The heavier melodies and sounds brought forth by "Elite", "Street Carp" and other tracks are countered by songs exuding emotion, and music which bleeds with the need to be set free. Case in point, "Digital Bath" showcases a higher register possibly never before reached by Chino, and Abe Cunningham's drum work perfectly matches the music hammered out by the four men before him. Meanwhile, Maynard James Keenan and Chino come together for possibly the best song on the red album, "Passenger", featuring some utterly insane singing by Keenan, as Chino underlies him, creating a perfect blend.

Everyone who's ever lost someone can believe in the opening words to "Teenager". "I climbed your arms/then you pulled away/a new cavity moved into/my heart today." Frank Delgado, who works the turntables, makes his presence felt here, helping in large part to create a dreamlike trance, lulling you down from the sarcastic highs to which "Street Carp" delivered you.

As "Knife Prty" (trust me, that's how they have it typed in the insert) morphs from one form to another, we're treated to Chino claiming "We are all anemic", and Abe pulling off some amazing fills. The dreamy style precedented by "Teenager" continues, you may not even catch that Chino is singing "So go get your knife" due to the fact that it sounds so harmonic. "Knife Prty" blends styles so well that it resembles four separate songs pieced together as one.

Following is a song most would place in Around The Fur, "Korea". And that idea makes sense, as it features the same screams that can be found in the chorus of "My Own Summer (Shove It)", as well as the same brand of hard-edged music.

Eerie guitar introductions headline "Pink Maggit" and "Change (In The House Of Flies)", but the two songs deviate at certain points. "Change (In The House Of Flies)" builds up to a rocking, perfect Deftones-style chorus, while "Pink Maggit" continues the weird and sometimes spooky for a longer period of time (and believe me, it can, it's 7:32 as opposed to 4:59 on "Change"), before converging eventually. To close, "The Boy's Republic" is the perfect period to this sentence.

There is not one track that can be denied by a metal fan on this album. The Deftones meet my expectations, one and all. Maybe now all the world will say their name in the same breath as all the other cemented greats. They're slowly reaching legendary status, let's hope they make it.