Saturday Night Wrist is the fifth studio album by the American alternative metal band Deftones, released on October 31, 2006, by Maverick Records.

Saturday Night Wrist was the product of an arduous and stressful creative process lasting roughly two years and straining relationships within the band.

Deftones spent most of the summer there, resulting in an album's worth of material that the singer Chino Moreno described as "straight evil music".

After some deliberation, however, Moreno and the drummer Abe Cunningham successfully pushed for working with the producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Kiss) and the engineer Brian Virtue.

Deftones then took a short break before planning a month-long tour with Dredg and C-Minus to road-test some material starting in San Francisco, California, and ending in Hartford, Connecticut, near where Ezrin's studio was located.

Moreno claimed that this was good for him, as he was somewhat unable to focus on the recording sessions due to his speed and alcohol addictions, as well as the dissolution of his longtime marriage to wife Celeste.

In early 2006, all previously recorded vocals were scrapped and the band started working on the album again with longtime friend Shaun Lopez (of Far and the Revolution Smile) acting as producer.

Carpenter stated in interviews that a significant portion of the songs were based on ideas by Moreno and that "Pink Cellphone", minus Hardy's vocals, was "all Chino".

In fact, Moreno plays second guitar on many of the songs, including "Hole in the Earth", "Beware", "Cherry Waves", "U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B,Select,Start", "Xerces" and "Rivière".

The iTunes version included the cover of "Drive" by the Cars, which featured producer Lopez as well as a prominent sample of Massive Attack's track "Protection" (from their album of the same name).

[22] During a 2016 interview with Kerrang, Moreno revealed that the tensions during the recording process and Chi Cheng's death have prevented him from listening to the album since its release.

Alternative Press gave the album a perfect score, stating "'Saturday Night Wrist' proves yet again that Deftones have a corner on the transcendental-metal market".

[14] Drowned in Sound also gave it a positive review, saying: "If you've even the slightest interest in 'heavy' music, you simply must make Saturday Night Wrist an integral part of your record collection".

Club gave it a positive review, stating: "The album is mostly a heady, atmospheric, willfully too-difficult-for-radio wash of sound that, save for a handful of tracks, stretches out and explores Deftones' creative limits more than ever before".

[13] A less enthusiastic, although positive, review came from Rolling Stone's Christian Hoard, who compared the band's "space-rock overlays" with Radiohead, but stated that "The songwriting never quite comes together, but this is a metal record that gets by as much on sonic tricks as monster riffs".