Deftones – Deftones

Deftones – DEFTONES, the band’s self-titled fourth studio album originally released in 2003 on Maverick Records, arrives here as a vinyl LP pressing carrying catalog number 48350, and it represents one of the more compelling entries in a discography that was already turning heads well before this record came out.

A Band That Earned This Moment

Deftones formed in Sacramento in 1988, built around the vocal work of Chino Moreno and the guitar of Stephen Carpenter, with bassist Chi Cheng and keyboardist Frank Delgado filling out the sound into something genuinely hard to categorize. They are a heavy band, but heaviness here means atmosphere as much as volume. Their records have drawn comparisons everywhere from Soundgarden to Portishead, which tells you something useful: this is a group that treats texture and melody as seriously as distortion and aggression. By the time this self-titled album landed in 2003, the band had two gold records behind them and had broken through to platinum territory with 2000’s White Pony. They had also earned a Grammy and played to over three million fans worldwide. The self-titled record was not a band finding their footing. It was a band with something to prove on their own terms.

What Makes Deftones – DEFTONES Worth Your Attention

The album sits in interesting territory, described at the time of its release as simultaneously erotic and brutal, relentless and gentle. Those are not contradictions in the Deftones catalog, they are the whole point. The record includes the singles “Hexagram” and “Minerva,” both of which show the band operating with confidence across different emotional registers. “Hexagram” hits with the kind of forward momentum that made the band a festival draw. “Minerva” pulls back into something more restrained and affecting. Together they give you a fair cross-section of what the album does across its full run. The self-titled release also marked a commercial peak, contributing to global sales of more than four million albums across their career at that point. That context matters when you are deciding which records belong in a collection.

The Pressing Details

This is an LP pressing on Maverick Records, catalog number 48350, representing a vinyl reissue of the original 2003 release. Specific pressing details beyond the label and catalog number are not confirmed, so condition and provenance should be verified with the listing. What is clear is that this is a relatively straightforward way to own the self-titled album on wax, a record that does not show up in every collection and that fills a real gap in any serious run through the Deftones catalog. If you already have White Pony and Around the Fur on vinyl, this is the obvious next piece.