Deftones — Around The Fur: The Promo Disc For The Album That Rewired Heavy Music

The Promo Disc For The Album That Rewired Heavy Music — the Vault Deep Dive on Deftones — Around The Fur (1997).

The Story

By 1997 Deftones had one album behind them and a label that still filed them under nu-metal because nobody had a better word yet. Around The Fur was the record that made the label wrong. Chino Moreno had stopped screaming to be heard and started singing through the noise — whispering, crooning, then tearing the roof off two bars later. It is the album where a Sacramento band stopped chasing the bands they were compared to and became the thing everyone else would spend a decade chasing instead.

The Sound

Stephen Carpenter tuned down and played less, and that restraint is the whole trick — riffs that sit on one note until the tension is unbearable. Abe Cunningham drums like a jazz player who got angry, Chi Cheng's bass carries the melody the guitar refuses to. And over all of it Moreno moves between a murmur and a howl mid-line. My Own Summer (Shove It) and Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) are the two doors most listeners walked in through, and nearly thirty years on, neither has aged a day.

The Sessions

Terry Date produced, at Bad Animals in Seattle — the same hands that shaped Soundgarden and Pantera, here deliberately leaving air in the mix instead of compressing it flat. Max Cavalera turned up to trade vocals on Headup, written in the aftermath of a death in his family. The cover photograph — the one that got the record pulled off some shelves — was of a friend of the band, shot in a hotel room, and the band has always maintained that provocation was never the point.

The Legacy

Around The Fur went platinum without a radio-shaped single, and it became the album that later bands cited when they wanted to explain why heavy music could be beautiful. Everything Deftones did afterward — White Pony most of all — starts here. Chi Cheng's death in 2013 closed the book on this lineup, which turns every original-era artifact from these sessions into something the band itself can never make again.

Why This Copy

This is the Maverick promotional CD, catalog 2-46810-AB — a label-issue disc pressed for radio and press, never sold at retail, in the numbers a promo run implies rather than a commercial one. Promo pressings of this record surface rarely and disappear fast, and this one is Near Mint throughout — disc, inserts and all.

What the pressing tells us

The part most listings skip. This is how we grade and how you can tell copies apart:

• Maverick promotional CD, catalog 2-46810-AB
• Promo-only issue — pressed for radio and press, not retail
• 1997 original-era pressing, not a later reissue
• Near Mint — disc and inserts clean throughout

Session file

• Produced by Terry Date at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle
• Max Cavalera guests on 'Headup', written after a death in his family
• Released October 1997 on Maverick — the band's second album
• The cover photograph was of a friend of the band, shot in a hotel room
• This is the promo pressing — catalog 2-46810-AB, never sold at retail

Who played on it

• Chino Moreno — Vocals, Guitar
• Stephen Carpenter — Guitar
• Chi Cheng & Abe Cunningham — Bass / Drums

Vault Trivia

1. Who produced Around The Fur?

1. Ross Robinson
2. Terry Date
3. Rick Rubin
4. Butch Vig

Reveal the answer

Terry Date — Terry Date — the same producer behind Soundgarden and Pantera records.

2. Which frontman guests on 'Headup'?

1. Jonathan Davis
2. Max Cavalera
3. Serj Tankian
4. Phil Anselmo

Reveal the answer

Max Cavalera — Max Cavalera of Sepultura and Soulfly.

3. In which city was the album recorded?

1. Sacramento
2. Los Angeles
3. Seattle
4. Chicago

Reveal the answer

Seattle — Seattle — at Bad Animals Studio.

4. Which single opened the album for most listeners?

1. Change
2. My Own Summer (Shove It)
3. Digital Bath
4. Bored

Reveal the answer

My Own Summer (Shove It) — My Own Summer (Shove It) — the record's lead single.

5. What makes this particular disc uncommon?

1. It is a picture disc
2. It is a promo-only pressing
3. It is a Japanese import
4. It is a bootleg

Reveal the answer

It is a promo-only pressing — A Maverick promotional issue, 2-46810-AB — pressed for radio and press, never retail.

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