Deftones + Pulled Apart By Horses, O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

First off, tonight’s opening band - Animals As Leaders - deserve a mention. Two eight-string guitars, a drummer, no vocals and more tempo changes than you could possibly imagine kick the night off with half an hour of confusion and musical prowess.

Then to the main support act in the form of Leeds’ Pulled Apart By Horses. Now fuelled with new material, as well as the now well worn in tracks from their brilliant self titled debut, they come out all guns blazing with a new track ‘V.E.N.O.M.’. All frantic chorus and monumental riff break down, this proves to be the set highlight. Bursting with energy they power through a half hour set containing two more new tracks. ‘The Crapsons’ sounds particularly forceful tonight, and set closer ‘I Punched A Lion In The Throat’ is in equal parts hilarious and heavy. However it’s still disappointing that the seven minute long riff onslaught and overall monster track, ‘Den Horn’, is still absent from the live set. Overall though, it’s wonderfully frantic rock and roll. Despite this, what comes next will make PABH sound like pre-pubescent children playing tambourines.

Tonight, Deftones absolutely, utterly and completely rip Shepherd’s Bush to pieces. If PABH came out all guns blazing, Deftones bomb the place. Opening with the title track from their (disgracefully overlooked) 2010 album ‘Diamond Eyes’, it’s both subtly catchy and entirely brutal. Then swiftly into ‘Diamond Eyes’’ lead single ‘Rocket Skates’, the chugging riff makes way for 2,000 people screaming the refrain ‘GUNS! RAZORS! KNIVES! Fuck with me!’. Aggressive, bizarre but wonderful stuff. After this start, you really wonder if it can get better. With the band clearly enjoying themselves the most they have in years, especially front man Chino Moreno, it’s obvious we’re in for something seriously good.

Despite some slightly lax work from ‘the sound bloke’ meaning the vocals were even more reverb drenched than intended, Chino sounds the best he has for some time. If anything, the excess reverb adds greater depth to the sound. With his screeches, cries and melodies engulfing the room, whilst fuelled with what seems to be the energy of both halves of Jedward, he entirely owns the stage. The crowd are in his palm from the outset.

Then to the band. Put simply, they sound fucking huge. From the opening two tracks they move to debut album ‘Adrenaline’’s stand out track ‘Engine No.9.’ which unleashes the first classic riff of the night, before the ‘nu-metal-shoegaze-fusion’ of ‘Around The Fur’’s ‘Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)’ allows for even greater crowd participation. Then ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ takes the riffing to a whole new level.

As the set moves on, Chino and co. continue to captivate the crowd with a particularly exceptional set of songs. ‘Knife Prty’ and ‘Minerva’ are the next truly majestic moments, with a momentous crowd sing-along. ‘Minerva’, more than any other track tonight, really brings a great sense of emotion; some fully-grown men even seem on the verge of welling up. It really is hairs on the back of your neck stuff. That’s testament to any band. ‘You’ve Seen The Butcher’ and ‘Sextape’ highlight some of the best moments from ‘Diamond Eyes’ and demonstrate some of Deftones’ relatively softer moments. The range of style of song really puts across the class of the band. A rare outing of ‘Saturday Night Wrist’ single ‘Hole in the Earth’ precedes the apex of the set - ‘Change in the House of Flies’ and ‘Passenger’. These together bring the biggest reaction of the night, with the latter being Chino’s best performance of the Maynard James Keenan chorus that I’ve heard.

What’s been seen and heard here is a gut wrenching, awe inspiring, incredibly original and near faultless display of the genre known as metal. For such a self-professed cynic as myself, I really struggle to find fault… and this all before the encore of ‘Nosebleed’ and ‘7 Words’ - the traditional set closer that was made purely to incite the type of moshing that would be present at a gig if it were to take place mid-apocalypse. With that, it ends. Two hours, twenty-three songs, more brutal riffs than you’d care to count and 2,000 die-hard fans left in awe. It may seem like I’m just trying to find everything good about the set. Yet in truth, I went in relatively sceptical about their live performance in relation to the albums, but came out feeling like a proverbial muppet for even thinking that. Tonight, Deftones are the best rock band on the planet. This is one of the bands you really, really, definitely, really really need to see live.