Team Sleep are the band that the Deftones' frontman, Chino Moreno, has spent much of the time since White Pony working with, and this marks their debut. Each of the band members has enjoyed some success elsewhere, but it is undoubtedly the case that Moreno is the driving force, the star, and the main creative influence.
But this is not a Deftones album. Like an author using a nom-de-plume, Moreno made this record as a side project for a reason. There are a couple of tracks that verge into Deftones territory,mainly along the lines of gentler tracks, like Minerva or Passenger, although not quite as powerful.
But this is a wide-ranging piece of work, sometimes leaving metal entirely behind and ranging into electronic-influenced and indie sounds. At one point, I had to check the cover notes, convinced that Moreno was collaborating with Belle and Sebastian (of course, he wasn't). At another, the bass-line and vocals are heavily - and enjoyably - reminiscent of The Cure (whose "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" was covered so perfectly by the Deftones). Make no mistake, though: influences might be there, but this album is anything but derivative.
A comparison would be between the work of Keenan in Tool and A Perfect Circle, or between McCoy in the Fields of the Nephilim and Nefilim: there is a clear common thread, but the delivery is wider and at times you feel the band are finding their feet in a new medium.
Ataraxia, the opening track, is a brilliantly-chosen opener. It sets mood and expectations, and the listener embarks upon the later tracks wanting to like what they will hear. I really can't stress how good a song it is. Like Passenger on White Pony, it is the sort of track that just about justifies the purchase price by itself. The rest of the album is wide-ranging, and this experimentalism does mean that there will be both more and less satisfying tracks for almost any individual listener.
Approaching this album merely as a piece of left-field metal/indie music, I enjoyed it rather a lot. But a Deftones fan expecting more of the same? The odds are that they would find something they like - I find it hard to believe that anyone can dislike track one - but some tracks will get skipped a lot.
I'll go out on a limb: I honestly can't see Team Sleep developing the way that A Perfect Circle did for Moreno's friend Keenan. For one thing, the Deftones are still extant, and thus Moreno won't have two years to blow on the next album. For another, this album doesn't have the rich consistency of Mer de Noms. But it's a worthwhile experiment. No, it's a worthwhile series of experiments, on one album.