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Chicago Tribune
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: With a sold-out show at United Center, Deftones are bigger than they've ever been
Fans of the Sacramento, California-founded hard rock act Deftones have long known that the band is one of the best of its kind. Though lumped in with the nu-metal craze of the late 1990s, Deftones were always more musically ambitious than their counterparts, paving their own lane in the alternative scene by combining (or 'mutating,' as frontman Chino Moreno once called it an interview with the British publication NME) elements of new wave, punk, rap and metal into songs that ranged from relentlessly abrasive to lush and melodic. Some critics have gone so far as to dub them 'the Radiohead of Metal' due to the band's sonically exploratory nature, as well as to Moreno's much meme'd 'screamoan' (scream and moan) singing style. Having not released new music since 2020's 'Ohms,' they've relied on touring to sustain themselves and their fans – who include everyone from longtime diehards to Gen-Z TikTokers (the annals of Deftones TikTok run deep). A new album has been teased for the past few years and is reportedly nearly finished. The modern reassessment of late '90s nu metal has played a role in the band's seemingly sudden resurgence, but where the likes of Limp Bizkit or this summer's Lollapalooza headliner Korn's popularity seems rooted in nostalgia and camp (for lack of a better word), interest in Deftones is brimming with serious adoration. Thirty-five years into their career, they're now bigger than ever. Currently on the first leg of a North American arena tour, the band ripped through a tight, 75-minute set at the United Center Monday night, following sets by Boston-based Fleshwater and The Mars Volta. (The latter played only new material from an upcoming, unreleased album.) 'Deftones never embraced the 'nu-metal' title, even in that era,' recounted concert-goer Christian Vera, 43, who first saw the band as an opener while in high school. 'Maybe they have in the last five years or so, but in the 'nu-metal era,' they really only did the metal tours if it was a festival. Last year, they did Lolla, they did Coachella, they started Dia de los Deftones (in 2018) for themselves. In Sacramento, they're gods. They've never pigeonholed themselves.' If you followed the black fishnets, combat boots and cigarette smoke up Madison Street on Monday night, you'd have seen the line of folks waiting to enter the sold-out show. In a parking lot a few blocks west, friends Matthew Cereno, 25, Alex Corral, 26, and Gabriel Delgado, 25, said they were seeing Deftones for the first time. 'I'm open to everything as far as the setlist,' Delgado says of his anticipation. 'I don't know what to expect. I never watched videos of their previous tours, I never YouTubed old videos. … Fifteen years ago, we weren't allowed to go to the shows. So yeah you're listening to the music at 14, 15, but it was always a 21+ show.' 'We've definitely grown up (with Deftones), but my favorite piece of tonight is Mars Volta,' Corral admits. 'They hold a special place for me.' Inside at around 9 p.m., the crowd's eagerness reached its peak. Very few people moved during Mars Volta, so 15 minutes later, when the lights went down and the opening chords of 'Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)' filled the air and the drums kicked in, it was like a powder keg. Immediately rushing to the front of the stage, singer Chino Moreno — rocking a pair of original Air Jordan 1's in the house that Jordan built — led the audience in a 20-song sing-along that revisited eight of Deftones' nine studio albums. The band — made up of guitarists Stephen Carpenter and Lance Jackman, bassist Fred Sablan, drummer Abe Cunningham, and Frank Delgado helming keys, turntables and samples — was fiercely dedicated to precision while Moreno's vocal acrobatics stunned, oscillating between raw screams and howls on 'My Own Summer (Shove It),' 'Around the Fur,' and an incendiary, show-ending performance of '7 Words,' to soaring, full-throat crescendos as heard on 'Swerve City,' 'Sextape,' 'Rosemary,' 'Bored,' and the tour debut of fan favorite, 'Cherry Waves.' 'I just realized something,' Moreno said in his longest address to the crowd. 'It's (expletive) Monday. … Usually the most boring day of the week and I'm having a blast, Chicago. We hope you are too.' The intensity of the reception never let up, aided by ever-changing visual projections— some as esoteric as Moreno's lyrics. When diamonds weren't tumbling down over the band or beautifully tragic femme fatales dancing across screens, the set design gave a bit of 'Cell Block Tango' from the musical Chicago (maybe an unintentional nod to their host city) and though grand, managed to still feel intimate. 'This is my eighth or ninth Deftones show and it's definitely the best one I've seen,' Rudy Nava, 35, said once the band left the stage around 10:45 p.m. 'Deftones stay really true to their sound,' he continued. 'They make new albums just like any other band, but what I've noticed is they'll be like 'Hey, there weren't that many hits on this album. We're not going to shove that album down everyone's throat, we're going to keep playing the hits, we're going to keep playing the songs people want to hear.' And I think that's really kept them going. That's what's really drawing this new generation of TikTokers to them.' Friends Samantha Enriquez, 21, Nina Estrada, 21, and Evelyn Gonzalez, 23, said they met at work and became friends through bonding over Deftones' music. For them, the concert held additional meaning. At its height, the nu-metal scene — dominated by cisgender white men— was seen as unforgiving, dangerous, and intolerant of women and people of color. Deftones were one of the few bands gracing the stages that weren't all-white. Younger generations have been noting that aspect of their presence in and contributions to hard rock and heavy metal as something to celebrate. 'I didn't feel judged. I could be myself and just jam,' Enriquez said. 'Everybody's singing and jamming, like OK these are my people. 'Seeing a heavy band of dudes of color matters,' she added. 'They're into the culture. They understand the troubles we go through, they relate to it. Especially for people of color to get into rock, it's really hard. There are still barriers to entry. So to see that diversify, I feel appreciated and looked at and I feel welcome.' Jessi Roti is a freelance writer. Setlist at the United Center on March 31: 'Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)' 'My Own Summer (Shove It)' 'Diamond Eyes' 'Tempest' 'Swerve City' 'Feiticeira' 'Digital Bath' 'Prayers/Triangles' 'You've Seen the Butcher' 'Rocket Skates' 'Sextape' 'Around the Fur' 'Headup' 'Rosemary' 'Hole in the Earth' 'Change (In the House of Flies)' 'Genesis' Encore: 'Cherry Waves' 'Bored' '7 Words'
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Deftones will bring expansive tour to Target Center
The Deftones didn't have Minnesota on the docket when it announced its 2025 North American tour, but the second leg of the tour, announced on Wednesday, will bring the long-running metal outfit to Minneapolis. The band behind White Pony will make a stop at the Target Center on Aug. 29. They'll be joined by Phantogram, who headlined a night at The Fillmore in February, and The Barbarians of California. New music from the group may arrive in the Twin Cities before the band. The Deftones are expected to release an album at some point this year, but details haven't been shared. The last studio effort from the Deftones was 2020's Ohms. The band formed in the early '90s and exploded in popularity with the mid-'90s releases of Adrenaline (1995) and Around the Fur (1997). They separated themselves from the burgeoning nü-metal movement three years later with White Pony, a more sonically dynamic album that continues to earn praise decades later, including a mention among Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All-Time. Other portions of the tour will feature Idles in place of Phantogram, while previously announced dates include shows with The Mars Volta, System of a Down, and Fleshwater. Elsewhere in the Midwest, the Deftones will stop in Chicago (March 31), Detroit (April 1), and Milwaukee (Aug. 30). A Live Nation presale starts on Friday, March 14 at 10 a.m. with the code "FUNKY." Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Monday, March 17 at 10 a.m.
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
At the Forum, rockers Deftones show why they've stayed ahead of their time, 30 years and counting
On Wednesday night, Gen Z's favorite heavy rock band took a moment onstage at the Kia Forum to remember their first gig there. 'Our first time at the Forum was 1995, opening for Ozzy Osbourne,' Deftones singer Chino Moreno said, sweating through his T-shirt before the first of two sold-out crowds. 'It was f— crazy.' Since the early '90s, Deftones — the Sacramento-raised, metal-tinged experimentalists — have defined the bleeding edge of heavy guitar rock, working in elements of post-punk, shoegaze, electronics and melancholy whispered vocals. They've had six top 10 albums in four different decades, founded a hugely popular festival (Dia De Los Deftones, in San Diego) and cultivated one of the most devoted, multicultural and open-minded subcultures in rock. But something happened over the last five years where the band's precise lane of ambient sadness and tensile rage hit a whole new generation right where it hurts. To judge by the Forum crowd on Wednesday, Deftones have never been bigger, or more definitional for what young people want out of heavy music in all its gradients. A band ahead of their time, for 30 years and counting. Deftones' last album, 2020's 'Ohms,' was a return to the more brutal form of their breakthrough late '90s and early 2000s LPs, despite the band (now Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham and keyboardist Frank Delgado) recording at the peak of pandemic lockdowns. At the time, Moreno's assessment of the album matched the mood of the era — 'The record has a dystopian vibe that, in hindsight, really feels current to me,' Moreno told The Times. 'It just kind of happened how that's the current state of a lot of people's lives now — uncertainty about their surroundings and not feeling super optimistic.' Well, we're all right back in it. If anything's changed since, it's that younger audiences — entranced by the shoegaze atmospheres on singles like 'Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) and the '90s metal aesthetics of their retro merch — have brought fresh perspective onto why Deftones remain so captivating and cathartic. Their plays are into the billions on Spotify, and 'Cherry Waves' became a TikTok hit for documenting the murk of young lust — something is clicking anew. After an opening set teasing hypnotic new music from Latin-infused heavy rockers the Mars Volta (who know a thing or two about responding to oppressive environments), Deftones rose to the occasion of fresh stardom. Wednesday's Forum show felt locked into the full scale of an arena tour, with beautifully-framed abstract visuals that positioned the group on two stories of risers, leaving Moreno plenty of room to bloodlet up front on the churning 'My Own Summer' (Shove It),' while commanding the void in silhouette on 'Sextape.' With a fresh wave of interest and a vast catalog to pull from, the band's range and sequencing for the show were exceptional. They've always moved between gloss and grime, shimmer and savagery. But following them from the misty, Cocteau Twins-indebted early single 'Digital Bath' to the contemporary, bone-cracking crunch of 2020's 'Genesis' made the old stuff feel visionary and new material ageless. Mid-career tracks like 'Prayers/Triangles' showed the melodic panache that's helped these albums stand the test of time, while era-defining cuts like 'Change (In the House of Flies)' haven't lost of drop of menace — if anything, they've gained power with time. The band didn't pander to the newbie meme crowds though. In this political environment, it takes some guts to wrap up with '7 Words,' their famously anti-cop grinder from 1995, where a very young Moreno taunted 'Resist to cease, understand? / God hates black shades and all the clergy / Mr. P.I.G., could I f— see?' In 2025, he played it with reverence for the purity of that rage, the absolute conviction that the world he saw was broken. It's worth rediscovering that feeling today.
