Deftones : private music

Deftones are true survivors of the onslaught of the mid-90s heavy music scene. Lumped into the Nu metal crowd(unfairly), by their 3rd album White Pony the California art rock/metal band showed far more many colors and hues in their sonic palate. This gave them the artistic and creative cache needed to solidify a respected music career. 30 years proves that.

Albums like the aforementioned White Pony, the 2003 self-titled, Saturday Night Wrist, and most of the post-Chi Cheng era have shown a band varied in influence and sonic exploration. They’re a long way from Adrenaline and Around The Fur. The band’s newest album and first since 2020’s Ohms shows Deftones not slowing a bit. private music is heavy, catchy, dreamy, and has just the right amount of dissonance to keep long time fans engaged, while offering new ears something to cling to. This is Deftones firing on all cylinders.

While digging White Pony, it wasn’t until Saturday Night Wrist that I completely locked into Deftones. It sounded like the heaviest shoegaze album ever and I was there for that(and one of the most fraught times for the band.) It also helped at that time in the mid-2000s when all of the band’s covers of artists like The Cars, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and even Lynyrd Skynyrd came out, revealing even more layers to the band’s mystique. private music continues that varied sound that Saturday Night Wrist had, combining both the heaviest and dreamiest aspects of the band.

“my mind is a mountain’ opens the record on staccato guitar attacks and a menacing steamroller-like rhythm. Chino Moreno has never sounded better. “locked club” has a guttural sound; Chino Moreno’s shouting like a drill sergeant and the guitars chugging low as if the strings are dangling to the floor. And drummer Abe Cunningham keeps things moving along like a Howitzer on the march.

There’s also lighter moments like the hazy and beautiful “i think about you all the time”, or the heavy but dream-like album closer “departing the body” that seems to bring together the harshness of Nothing with the shoegaze of No Joy. And “metal dream” somehow succeeds at being dissonant and melancholy simultaneously.

private music sees Deftones locked in together and making some of their best music, 30 years into an at times triumphant and tumultuous career. They’ve unlocked the key to making heavy music that’s both dissonance and beauty combined. Deftones are back in a big way.