Deftones

• 1. Introduction

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  Deftones, an alternative metal band from Sacramento, California, begins with a skateboarding accident. At 15, Stephen Carpenter was hit by a car while riding. He spent several months in a wheelchair. During that time, he taught himself guitar by playing along to thrash metal records. The bands included Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death and Metallica.

  The teenager who learned that way would later team up with two friends from the same skate scene. Their band went on to release albums across four decades, and it is still making records in the 2020s. Critics who write about heavy music often treat it as a case apart.

  How did a few friends playing in a garage become a band that critics place away from the metal scene around it? Why did its records keep changing shape? And how does a group carry on after tragedy reaches inside its own lineup?

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• 2. Garage Beginnings

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  Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham and singer Chino Moreno were childhood friends who all attended C. K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento. The city's skateboarding scene kept them together. Their tastes pulled in different directions. Carpenter loved heavy metal. Moreno was drawn to hardcore punk like Bad Brains. He also liked post-punk and new wave acts such as Depeche Mode and the Cure.

  When Moreno learned that Carpenter played guitar, he arranged a jam session with Cunningham. The three began rehearsing regularly in Carpenter's garage around 1988. A long-circulated myth claimed that the driver who hit Carpenter paid him a cash settlement, and that the money bought the band's first equipment. Cunningham called the story false in a 2007 interview.

  The early lineup shifted several times. Dominic Garcia joined on bass, making the group a four-piece. When Cunningham left to join another Sacramento band called Phallucy, Garcia moved to drums, and Chi Cheng took over on bass. A four-track demo followed soon after. John Taylor replaced Garcia on drums in 1991, and Cunningham came back in 1993.

  The name came from Carpenter, who joined the hip hop slang word def to the suffix tones. It also doubles as a pun on tone deaf.

  Club shows came first, and the band later pushed into San Francisco and Los Angeles, where it shared bills with Korn. One night in Los Angeles, the band closed for another act after most of the audience had already gone home. A representative from Maverick Records stayed and was impressed. The band then played three songs for label figures Freddy DeMann and Guy Oseary, and that audition earned a recording contract.

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• 3. Touring Into Fame

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  The first album, Adrenaline, was recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle and released on the 3rd of October 1995. Deftones produced it together with Terry Date, who would work on the next three records as well. Moreno sang every vocal live in the room with the band, holding a Shure SM58 microphone. Cunningham later said the group was very young and so pleased to be making a record that it did not agonize over improving the songs.

  Sales started slowly. Constant touring, word-of-mouth and early Internet promotion did the work instead, and Adrenaline eventually passed 220,000 copies. Cheng explained it this way: "One word: perseverance." The record spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and peaked at number 23. It was certified gold on the 7th of July 1999 and platinum on the 23rd of September 2008. Reviewers praised the drumming and the groove, though one noted a sameness in Moreno's whispered melodies.

  A song cut from the album, "Teething", still found an audience. The band gave it to the soundtrack of the 1996 film The Crow: City of Angels. They also appear on screen performing it during a Day of the Dead festival scene.

  Around the Fur arrived on the 28th of October 1997, recorded at Studio Litho in Seattle with Date again producing. It was dedicated to Dana Wells, the late stepson of Max Cavalera of Sepultura, who also collaborated on the track "Headup". Frank Delgado, not yet a member, was credited as audio on five tracks. Cunningham's wife, Annalynn, sang guest vocals on "MX". Cunningham tried a different snare drum on almost every song.

  Radio and MTV play for "My Own Summer (Shove It)" and "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" lifted the band into the alternative metal spotlight. The album sold 43,000 copies in its first week and entered the Billboard 200 at number 29, its highest position. Touring took the band to the Warped Tour in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, plus the Pinkpop Festival, the Roskilde Festival and Ozzfest. "My Own Summer (Shove It)" also appeared on the soundtrack of The Matrix, released on the 30th of March 1999. The record reached gold on the 24th of June 1999 and platinum on the 7th of June 2011.

  Reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine later wrote that the album "suggests they're about to come into their own".

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• 4. The White Pony Turn

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  Four months in the studio was the longest the band had ever given an album, and White Pony needed all of it. Moreno said most of that time went into simply trying to write songs. He named "Change (In the House of Flies)" as the moment the group began working as a unit. Pressure to hurry did not move them. Cheng said: "We didn't feel like we had anything to lose, so we made the record we wanted to make."

  The album came out on the 20th of June 2000, again produced by Date and the band. Sessions took place at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, and at Larrabee Sound Studios in West Hollywood. Delgado was now a full-time member and added new textures. DJ Crook, Moreno's friend and a bandmate in his side project Team Sleep, handled programming. Moreno began adding guitar parts.

  Guests widened the palette. Maynard James Keenan of Tool joined the band on "Passenger", and Rodleen Getsic sang on the refrain of "Knife Prty". Moreno described the melancholy "Teenager" as a love song. He also made a deliberate choice to bring fantasy into his lyrics. As he put it, "I basically didn't sing about myself on this record. I made up a lot of story lines and some dialogue, even."

  The release history was unusually tangled. The first edition had 11 tracks, running from "Feiticeira" to "Pink Maggit", under gray cover art. A limited run of 50,000 black-and-red jewel case copies added a twelfth track, "The Boy's Republic". Then came "Back to School (Mini Maggit)", a rap-influenced reworking of "Pink Maggit". It was issued as a single and as the new opener of a re-release on the 3rd of October 2000, with altered white artwork. Uneasy about making fans pay twice, the band offered the new song as a free download to anyone who owned the original.

  White Pony debuted at number 3 on the Billboard chart with 178,000 copies sold. Critics noted Moreno's growing skill as a lyricist and the group's experimental streak. AllMusic said the band "went soft, but in an impressive way". The album reached platinum on the 17th of July 2002 with more than 1.3 million copies sold in the United States. The song "Elite" earned the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for 2001.

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• 5. Pressure and Friction

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  The band's fourth album began under the working title Lovers, and Cheng said they wanted to get kind of heavy. Moreno first had to take vocal training, because the 2001 summer tour had badly damaged his vocal cords. The band then turned its Sacramento rehearsal space into a fully equipped studio. Most of the record was made there at almost no cost.

  Other sessions followed at Studio X in Seattle and at Larrabee Sound Studios. Date assisted on production, and Greg Wells contributed arrangement ideas on several tracks. The whole project took 12 months and about $2.5 million. Maverick fined the band for missing deadlines. A January 2003 break for the Big Day Out festival in Australia and New Zealand briefly pulled them away.

  The self-titled Deftones came out on the 20th of May 2003. It entered the Billboard 200 at number 2, selling 167,000 copies in its first week. The first single was "Minerva". For the second, "Hexagram", the band shot a video in an indoor skatepark in Simi Valley, California, with fans watching them play. Erlewine wrote that "Hexagram" hit harder than anything they had done before. He also felt the album stayed too close to familiar territory. B-Sides & Rarities followed on the 4th of October 2005. It paired a CD of B-sides and covers with a DVD of behind-the-scenes footage and videos.

  For album number five, the band set Date aside and hired producer Bob Ezrin. Cunningham said they needed to change things up, and that working with Ezrin put the band upside down. After the instruments were recorded, Moreno chose to track his vocals separately. He finished the record with Shaun Lopez, a former guitarist of Far, as producer. Cunningham said the sessions were tense because of the members' personal lives and compared them to pulling teeth.

  Saturday Night Wrist was released on the 31st of October 2006. It debuted at number 10 with just over 76,000 copies, well below the first-week totals of the two previous albums. Its single "Hole in the Earth" reached the video games Saints Row 2 and Guitar Hero 3, the latter as downloadable content. Annie Hardy of Giant Drag sang on "Pink Cellphone", and Serj Tankian of System of a Down appeared on "Mein". Blabbermouth.net called the disc one of the strongest in the band's catalogue. Touring through 2006 and 2007 covered North America, Europe, South America, Japan and Australia.

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• 6. Chi Cheng and Eros

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  Writing for a sixth album, Eros, began in the fall of 2007, and Moreno called the material unorthodox and aggressive. Recording started on the 14th of April 2008 with Date back as producer. Later that year, on the 4th of November 2008, Cheng was seriously injured in a car accident in Santa Clara, California. He was left in a minimally conscious state.

  His mother, Jeanne, and the band used the Deftones blog to post updates. On the 9th of December 2008, they reported that he had been moved to a hospital specializing in brain injuries. In late January 2009, the band said that their fallen comrade had not yet made significant progress. Sergio Vega, formerly of Quicksand, would take over on bass, as he had temporarily done in 1999. The band played its first show without Cheng since 1998 on the 5th of April 2009, at the Bamboozle Left festival in Irvine, California.

  Support came from the wider metal community. Brian Head Welch and Reginald Fieldy Arvizu of Korn recorded "A Song for Chi" with members of Sevendust, Slipknot and other bands. Proceeds went to Cheng and his family. Deftones announced two benefit shows in Los Angeles for 2009. On the 10th of March 2009, fan Gina Blackmore launched One Love for Chi. The site shared updates on his condition and auctioned items donated by friends of the band. All proceeds went to his family for his medical care.

  On the 23rd of June 2009, the band announced that Eros was delayed indefinitely. Its statement said that the songs did not best represent who they were as people and musicians. It added that the decision had no connection to Cheng's condition and was purely creative.

  Cheng made a partial recovery and returned home. On the 13th of April 2013, he fell into cardiac arrest. He died in a hospital in his hometown of Stockton, California, more than four years after the crash. In May, Moreno said Eros was now more likely to be released.

  On the first anniversary of Cheng's death in 2014, Moreno uploaded a track from the sessions called "Smile" to YouTube. Warner Music Group removed the video two days later over copyright infringement. The song was made available again, and it remains the only recording released from Eros.

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• 7. A Second Act

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  Diamond Eyes, produced by Nick Raskulinecz, took a more optimistic approach than the dark Eros, both in its lyrics and in its sound. Its release date moved several times and finally landed on the 4th of May 2010 after the album leaked online in March. The single "Rocket Skates" was offered as a free download on the 23rd of February 2010. Many listeners compared it and the title track to Around the Fur. That autumn the band toured the United States and Canada with Mastodon and Alice in Chains. The tour was named Blackdiamondskye after the three bands' latest albums. Jermaine Rogers, who has made most of the band's concert posters since the late 1990s, supplied silk-screened prints for each show.

  On Record Store Day, the 16th of April 2011, the band released an LP called Covers. It included "Drive" by the Cars, "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep" by the Cure and "No Ordinary Love" by Sade. Raskulinecz returned for Koi No Yokan, announced on the 30th of August 2012 and released on the 12th of November 2012 by Reprise Records. Metacritic scored it 86 out of 100 based on 18 reviews, which it labeled universal acclaim. It won Album of the Year at Revolver's Golden Gods Awards in May 2013.

  For Gore, the band turned to Matt Hyde, an engineer on the previous record. In early 2015, Moreno told Rolling Stone that the band had written 16 songs. He called the album a little more heady, and not a completely angry record. Vega recorded on a six-string bass, which pushed the sound into new territory. After several delays, Gore came out on the 8th of April 2016. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains played a guitar solo on "Phantom Bride", an unusual move for the band. Gwilym Mumford of The Guardian praised its experimentation and the tension between Moreno's soulful croon and Carpenter's pile-driving riffs.

  For the next album, Moreno stepped back from leading the songwriting so that Carpenter and Cunningham could contribute more. Date returned as producer, the first time he had worked with the band since the unreleased Eros. Ohms came out on the 25th of September 2020. Fans could digitally sponsor a dot from its cover through a charity campaign called Adopt-a-Dot. A 20th anniversary reissue of White Pony arrived in December of that year. It was packaged with Black Stallion, a remix album featuring Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, DJ Shadow and Robert Smith. The pandemic forced the band to postpone a joint tour with Gojira twice.

  In March 2022, the band said that Vega had left in early 2021. Vega claimed he was never an official member and had been a contracted bassist. He said he left after being offered the same status he had always held. Fred Sablan joined as touring bassist that April, and Lance Jackman filled in for Carpenter on the 2022 European tour.

  Sablan appears on Private Music, announced on the 10th of July 2025 and released on the 22nd of August. The band had been due to play Glastonbury on the 28th of June 2025, its first appearance there since 1998. It cancelled on the day because a member was ill. Private Music is listed for Best Rock Album at the Grammy Awards in 2026.

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• 8. A Sound Apart

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  Moreno emphatically rejected the nu metal label that the press attached to the band early on. He said the only thing the band shared with Korn was an admiration for Faith No More, especially the percussive vocals of Mike Patton. His objection was practical. As he put it, "Well if you're putting the word new in it, it's gonna be old in a couple of years." After White Pony, many critics agreed the band had outgrown the tag, though some kept using it. Stylus Magazine called the band perhaps the smartest members of the now moribund Nü-Metal genre.

  The band's own list of influences runs far from metal. It includes Faith No More, Primus, Bad Brains, Failure, Meshuggah, Fear Factory, the Smiths, Nine Inch Nails and Hum. Moreno has also named Prince, Portishead, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and the Smashing Pumpkins. Descriptions of the sound include shoegaze, dream pop, trip hop, post-metal, stoner rock and psychedelia, among many others.

  Time described Moreno's lyrics as suggesting emotions rather than announcing them. Moreno calls them ambiguous and sometimes impersonal, and says they are not only about the band's own story. Many song titles never appear in the lyrics. A song first gets a working title, often a silly or offhand joke thrown out by Cunningham or Carpenter, and that title can stick. Moreno often wrote words spontaneously during recording rather than keeping a book of lyrics.

  Critics have called Deftones the Radiohead of metal. Johnny Loftus wrote that rock critics reserve a special place for the band above or away from the turn-of-the-century metal movement. Peter Buckley, author of The Rough Guide to Rock, called them one of the most primal, powerful and experimental bands in alternative metal. A 2020 Billboard article noted how the band outlasted several rock trends and kept a devoted fan community.

  In the 2020s, publications began using the word Deftonescore for newer bands indebted to the group, including Glare, Thornhill and Bleed. Eli Enis, a former Revolver editor, said the term nu-gaze had shifted from the 2000s shoegaze wave to a fusion of shoegaze and nu metal. He traced much of that fusion back to Deftones, citing Narrow Head, Wisp, Loathe and Fleshwater. Musicians who credit the band as an influence range from Paramore and Linkin Park to Chvrches and the Weeknd.

  The members also keep busy elsewhere. Moreno fronts Team Sleep, Crosses, Palms and the supergroup Saudade. Carpenter founded the cinematic electronic metal group Sol Invicto with producer Richie Londres. Delgado belongs to the DJ collective Decibel Devils. In 2000, Cheng released The Bamboo Parachute, an album of his own spoken word poetry.

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