Around the Fur by Deftones

Around the Fur, Deftones' second album, came out on Maverick in October 1997, and it's the Sacramento band sharpening the attack they'd honed on the road behind their debut, Adrenaline. Terry Date produced it, and the record hits with a thick, bruising low end: Stephen Carpenter's guitar grinding like tectonic plates, Chi Cheng's bass and Abe Cunningham's drums locking into grooves that swing as much as they pummel, and Chino Moreno swerving from a whisper to a scream in the space of a bar.

"My Own Summer (Shove It)" and "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" went out as singles with videos, the first all menace, the second a rush of longing and speed. This is still the more aggressive Deftones, before White Pony took them somewhere stranger, and it kept selling long after the fact: gold in 1999, platinum by 2011.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.