Riff Police! Pull Over! #77: Blood Youth Vs Deftones!

Let’s start with what we know. Sacramento Californian Alternative Metallers Deftones recorded and entire album entitled “Eros” at the The Spot in Los Angeles between April and November 2008 and produced by Terry Date. The album was shelved as the final recorded work of bassist Chi Ling Dai Cheng who following a car accident and a coma, passed away five years later. While Cheng was in a coma, the band recruited former Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega and recorded and released “Diamond Eyes” in 2010 instead. While the band have stated at “Eros” remains unfinished and the likelihood of it being released is slim, they have suggested a song from it will appear live very soon and a new album will appear in 2020, which you can read about here. So what’s this got to do with the Riff Police series? Nothing. That’s just the warm up act. The introduction.

The favourite album of our friends in Weaponry to name but a few, when it comes to Deftones is “Around The Fur“. It may be 22 years old but it still holds the test of time and influenced a generation of bands. Opening cut “My Own Summer (Shove It)” was not only a huge single in its own right but has been covered by everyone and anyone you can think of. As if that wasn’t enough, it appeared in the Keanu Reeves classic “The Matrix” in 1999 alongside a host of other classic tracks from other bands.

So imagine our surprise when we heard  “Nerve” by Blood Youth from their album “Starve” out now via Rude Records. The album itself is something of a modernized take on the ideas of the 1999 Slipknot self titled album with plenty of similar riffs, ideas and atmospherics paying homage to the era sound. But that “My Own Summer” riff, it’s right there.