Diamond Eyes Rolling Tom Fill — Abe Cunningham (Deftones) Drum Lick | MetalForge
Learn the Diamond Eyes Rolling Tom Fill drum lick by Abe Cunningham of Deftones. From Diamond Eyes (Diamond Eyes (2010)). "Diamond Eyes," the title track of Deftones' 2010 album, marked a significant artistic reset for the...
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1. Abe Cunningham's Signature Licks — "Diamond Eyes," the title track of Deftones' 2010 album, marked a significant artistic reset for the band — Diamond Eyes was recorded under enormous emotional pressure following the illness of bassist Chi Cheng, and the album's directness, urgency, and melodic focus reflect those circumstances profoundly. Abe Cunningham's drumming on the title track is some of his most exhilarating work on record: at approximately 140 BPM, the song drives with a controlled energy that balances alt-metal aggression with melodic sensitivity, and the fill passages that punctuate the arrangement are among the most fluid and satisfying of his career. Where his White Pony performances are defined above all by restraint, "Diamond Eyes" showed Cunningham's ability to let the music breathe at pace — to find the pocket in an urgent groove and decorate it with fills that feel like natural extensions of the song's emotional arc rather than technical insertions.
The fill vocabulary Cunningham deploys in "Diamond Eyes" is characteristically economical: two- or three-beat tom patterns that move with a rolling momentum from high tom to floor tom, resolving on the snare with a crack that feels like the sentence completing itself. The cascade quality of these fills — each tom stroke leading naturally to the next — distinguishes them clearly from raw chops display. Cunningham does not fill for length or density; he fills for shape, and every fill in "Diamond Eyes" has a clear beginning, motion, and resolution that mirrors the song's rising chorus energy. The interplay between his open hi-hat work in the chorus and the closed, driving 8th-note pattern in the verse creates rhythmic colour without adding complexity, modulating the song's emotional register between intimacy and release at precisely the right moments.
What makes the "Diamond Eyes" fill passages such a rewarding study is their physical accessibility at the song's tempo: they require real technique, but they are learnable musical patterns rather than elite-level feats, which makes them ideal for intermediate-to-advanced drummers building a musical fill vocabulary. The underlying approach is the same whether the player is a beginner or an expert: feel the shape of the fill in your mind — the arc from start to landing — before playing it on the kit. Cunningham's musical intelligence on this track is not a product of speed but of intention, and intention is learnable at any level. For drummers, "Diamond Eyes" is a master class in how a fill can serve a song: economical, shaped, and always landing exactly where the arrangement needs it to, making the entire performance feel inevitable rather than improvised.2. Abe Cunningham Profile — Begin each tom fill from the highest pitch and cascade down to the floor tom in a smooth, even rolling motion Resolve the fill on the snare with a deliberate accent that matches the chorus entry point Contrast the closed hi-hat verse groove with open hi-hat in the chorus to modulate the song's emotional register Keep fill length to two or three beats maximum — Cunningham's fills serve structure, not display Pull back dynamically just before the fill enters so the cascade has room to build into its landing
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