What could heaviness become in the space of a year?
Put Dream Theater’s Awake next to Deftones’ Adrenaline, and the answer gets pretty wild, pretty fast. Released in early October one year apart, the records sound like two bands pulling heavy music toward completely different futures. One tightens the screws. The other throws its shoulder through the door.
Both are heavy. They just define the word differently.
Awake is Dream Theater pushing further into shadow. Images and Words had breakthrough sheen and moments that seemed built to soar. Awake feels heavier not simply because the guitars are thicker, but because the entire record carries more weight.
John Petrucci’s rhythm work is chunkier and meaner, especially on “The Mirror” and “Lie,” where the riffs settle into grinding grooves rather than using complexity as the main event. The band can still do impossible-band stuff, obviously, but here the technique creates tension instead of constantly calling attention to itself.
That darker pull runs through the album. Kevin Moore’s keyboards don’t brighten the songs so much as haunt their edges. “Voices” keeps shifting underneath James LaBrie, whose performance sells the unease rather than simply overpowering it. Then there’s “Space-Dye Vest,” an ending with almost no interest in triumph. It’s intimate, detached, and cold — the emotional comedown after more than an hour of control.
Even the rhythm section makes Awake feel physical. Mike Portnoy and John Myung aren’t simply navigating difficult arrangements. They give them momentum. “6:00” is busy without becoming fussy, while “Erotomania” packs ridiculous precision into something that still moves like a song instead of an exercise.
That might be Awake’s greatest trick: all that machinery, and you can still feel the band underneath it.
Adrenaline comes at heaviness from almost the opposite direction.
There’s no grand architecture announcing itself. The album gets its point across through impact. Stephen Carpenter’s riffs on “Bored,” “Root” and “Engine No. 9” sit low, blunt, and rhythmic, built around bounce as much as outright aggression. Where Dream Theater reveal the machinery, Deftones make theirs disappear.
The record sounds raw, but the band isn’t sloppy. That distinction matters.
Abe Cunningham’s drumming gives these songs swing and snap, preventing the riffs from turning into a wall of chugging. They lurch, jab, and recoil. Chino Moreno, meanwhile, hasn’t fully become the atmospheric singer who would define later Deftones records. On Adrenaline, he’s still a live wire — barking, muttering, and tearing into screams, sometimes within the same song.
“7 Words” is the obvious eruption, but “One Weak” and “Birthmark” show the same push and pull between restraint and release.
The production makes it hit harder. Adrenaline is dry, close, and immediate. Later Deftones records would become dreamier, stranger, and more spacious. Here, the band is still mostly elbows and sweat.
Yet “Fireal” already points toward something else. The atmosphere creeps in. Space starts to matter. The band Deftones would eventually become is already hiding inside the one making all this noise.
So what could heaviness become in the space of a year?
Awake says it can be intricate, dark, and technically exact without losing force. Adrenaline says it can live in groove, abrasion, and instinct without sacrificing control.
That’s what makes putting these records together so interesting. They aren’t two stops on the same road. They’re evidence that the road was splitting.
In the mid-’90s, heavy music wasn’t moving toward one future.
It was suddenly discovering how many futures it had.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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