Editor’s note: this column is ongoing, reviewing music varying from ’70s rock to today’s hits.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, so let’s get in the mood. I love the Deftones, and I picked this album since it’s packed with love-based songs and is an all-around great album.

The phrase “Koi No Yokan” itself is Japanese, and it doesn’t mean instantaneously head over heels, but instead a love that must grow with time.

“Rosemary,” one of the best songs on this album, is packed with potent emotion that hits like a freight train in the night. It is a beautiful song that has an amazing guitar slide toward the end, putting it at the top of my list. “Entombed” pushes you into a similar emotional state, which makes driving down a highway at night euphoric.

Moving into the meaty love songs, “Romantic Dreams” taps into the feeling of love in such a way that shows how deep the artist feels and what he is willing to do to be with her. This song has some solid drumming and strumming that really raise the feelings as a whole. Similarly, “Graphic Nature” talks  about the narrator being in love with a stripper and he knows it is bad for him, but he stays regardless.

“Leathers” hits hard and is open to interpretation. To me, “Leathers” feels revealing, peeling away the layers and being truly vulnerable with who you love and confronting the things that can either make or break a relationship.

It is important to note that not all relationships are all spark, and some are harmful. “Swerve City” is a song about how girls can manipulate guys in a soothing, almost tamable sense with the relation to horses in the song. Another is the excellent “Poltergeist,” which means a noisy disturbing spirit, which features a killer riff. If someone takes pleasure in causing issues in the relationship, “Poltergeist” says there is still love for the one causing trouble.

Finally, “Gauze” is more about how hard relationships can be over time and how getting close to one another can do the opposite, pushing each other away.

This album is not entirely about love, due to many outside factors that were affecting the band at the time. One factor being the death of their longtime friend and bass player, after being in a coma for four years. His death heavily impacted among many of the songs, but particularly “Goon Squad” and “What Happened to You?”