After braving the painful auditory assault that is Saturday Night Wrist, I can’t think of a band that under-achieves more frequently than the Deftones.

Prior to this debacle, all the signs pointed to the Deftones rise to the upper-tiers of the hard rock elite. Following the massive hit and critical acclaim of White Pony in 2000, the band followed up their only platinum selling album with Deftones in 2003. While White Pony tended to get bogged down in sonic ambiance, Deftones was a harder, more volatile effort, highlighted by several songs that begged for repeat listens. The Deftones had everything going for them, which brings us to the abject failure otherwise known as Saturday Night Wrist.

There are a host of bad decisions littered across the album’s fifty-one minutes. The lyrics routinely will illicit groans. Chino Moreno’s vocals languish in a monotonous drone, then burst into a shriek the next moment. The ‘lug and lurch’ effect feels a kid learning to operate a manual transmission for the first time. Filler is everywhere, leaving hardly any song untouched. All of this is compounded by the muddled production, which resembles thick, jell-o like gravy that’s sat in the fridge long after Thanksgiving is over.

Long story short, Saturday Night Wrist is a scandalous blunder.

What, specifically, is so terrible about the album? How about the following:

Abominations. I reserve the use of this word only when I feel a band has seemingly gone out of their way to torture me with some hideous fiasco of a song. The Deftones, amazingly, have done it twice in one album.

First up is Rapture, an early candidate for the worst song of the year. Moreno is simply awful, with a nasally scream that is positively excruciating. The wall of noise backing him up does him no favors. The creative juices were most definitely not flowing when they recorded this song.

The second abomination is Pink Cellphone. No senseless wails, mercifully, but a lot of dull sonic clatter and a female voice talking about butt-f*cking and the reasons why British folks have bad teeth. [Blank stare] Is this considered music? Sadly, I’ll never get back the five minutes I wasted listening to this travesty.

Meltdown in the Middle. The album’s center holds the worst material, by far. There is the sloppily written Rats!Rats!Rats! that surrounds a driving bridge with a cobbled together mess of fumbling guitar lines and searing screams. If that sounds like a good time to you, then your ears will suffer the consequences.

Mein is bolstered by a charging riff from Stephen Carpenter, but what lyrics there are get repetitive in a hurry. The instrumental U,U,…Select, Start is fine enough, but it adds little to the album as a whole.

In spite of all this horror, there are a few bright spots:

The Beginning. The album jumps out to a fairly strong start, aided by a couple dandy selections: the lead single, Hole in the Earth, is a stalwart. Moreno’s liquid-smooth vocals are satisfying, to say nothing of the spine-tingling bridge and slamming finale that tops it all off in style.

The six-minute rocker Beware is the most experimental track here, alternating between atmospheric and intense. Likewise, Cherry Waves is more traditional alt-rock, but it’s got plenty of slow-burning energy that makes it a winner. In both these tracks, Moreno’s vocals are top-notch; emotive, angry, and passionate, fused together perfectly. Too bad he couldn’t do that more often.

Decent Finish. The big stud near the end is Combat. While it loses a few points for a drawn-out entry, it’s a potent track that stands out thanks to some fantastic guitar work by Carpenter. Moreno’s piercing scream finally seems appropriate, adding a furious edge without wrecking the song entirely.

Kimdracula and Riviere are a mixed bag. The former doesn’t benefit from crisp production values, but it has enough wild vocals and big riffs to earn a cautious recommendation. The latter is not so impressive, with a plodding build up and a weak payoff.

All in all, Deftones supporters have to be shaking their heads after hearing Saturday Night Wrist. True, there are some exciting moments where the Deftones’ considerable talents combine to form a great song. Unfortunately, there are way too many stupid mistakes holding this album back. The lyrics usually fail to inspire, the vocals are all over the map, and two absolutely horrid tracks somehow made the cut. These kinds of gaffes should not be happening on a band’s fifth full-length studio album.

Once again, the Deftones have failed to live up to their potential.

Recommended: No