Change (In the House of Flies)

The harmonic language of 'Change' is deliberately sparse: a small set of diatonic minor chords that prioritize atmosphere over progression. By avoiding the raised leading tone that would create a pull toward resolution, the song sustains a state of suspension from first note to last. The expressive weight falls on texture — Delgado's pitch-shifted samples, Cheng's dub-inflected bassline, and the slow accumulation of the arrangement do work that harmonic movement would handle in a more conventionally structured song. The result is a track where the chords almost disappear into the sound design.

The song grew out of an unstructured rehearsal session during the White Pony recording sessions. Chino Moreno and Stephen Carpenter started playing guitars together while Frank Delgado added keyboard-style parts. The rest of the band joined without any predetermined direction, and Moreno described the moment the arrangement clicked as a point when everything started to come together. Drummer Abe Cunningham recalled recognizing early that the band was onto something. Moreno developed his vocal lines by repeatedly listening to the track and mush-mouthing — improvising sounds over the music until lyrics surfaced. Chi Cheng contributed a dub-reggae-inspired bassline that Carpenter and producer Terry Date initially questioned; Cheng held his ground, and the track's commercial success later validated his approach.

Released in May 2000 as the lead single from White Pony, 'Change (In the House of Flies)' reached number three on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart and proved that Deftones could operate at a considerable remove from nu metal's aggression. The song built from an unstructured rehearsal session, with Frank Delgado fashioning synth-like sounds from guitar pedals and a turntable because no synthesizer was available. Its abstract lyrics and creeping arrangement made it an outlier on rock radio in 2000 — and one of the genre's most cited tracks two decades later.