Man I would pay an obscene amount of money to have a S/T album with a cleaned up version of Lovers on it.
I can't believe it's been 20 years. A monumentally important album for me. I saw them on their club tour when this album was released and actually got to go back stage and meet them all. I was a 17 year old kid so I just shook their hands and didn't say much, but they were all so cool to me. Got a pair of drum sticks signed by Abe that I still treasure.
Revisiting their discography now, and it's always been one of my favorites, but it's definitely top three, maybe top two on a good day. "Bloody Cape" might be their heaviest song after "Elite"
Updating the ol' ranking, which is mostly the same but including Ohms and with Adrenaline up a spot lol White Pony Diamond Eyes Deftones Koi no Yokan Gore Ohms Around the Fur ----------------- Adrenaline Saturday Night Wrist
Ain't gonna rank, but White Pony through Diamond Eyes is such a stellar run of albums to me. Since then their albums are harder to digest; it feels like they're not as immediately accessible, and I end up forgetting what I've listened to more readily.
There was a little bit of magic that was lost after S/T for me. For one, SNW was sort of cobbled together by the band and then later Chino came on board (although Riviere might be on of their best songs), and then obviously with the loss of Chi things changed up quite a bit. Still some excellent music post S/T, just has never been the same.
I dunno, maybe this is a minority opinion, but I love Saturday Night Wrist. "Hole In The Earth", "Rapture", "Beware", "Cherry Waves", "Xerces", "Kimdracula", all great songs. I'm not as big on "Mein" though, and I'm not sure what they were thinking having that be the second single from that album.