Deftones frontman Chino Moreno was recently interviewed by 93X (see below) about the band’s forthcoming new album “Ohms” and more. Amid the chat, Moreno said that a new single from the record would be arriving next week, which presumably will be the track “Genesis“ . When asked about the choice to present the title track as the first single from the record, Moreno responded:
“That’s always a tough decision to make because it’s hard to pick one song that’s pretty much gonna be people’s sort of, you know… their first impression of what it is that’s coming. I feel like this record is, I don’t want to say all over the place, but it’s definitely not just ‘that’ song.
That song is one piece of what this record is. But at the same time, I felt like it had a lot of the elements that Deftones are sort of… what makes us special in whatever way. And the fact that it’s like dynamic, there’s riffs, it’s riff-oriented. It’s not a typical format either if you really look at the song format itself.
It’s not verse/chorus or verse/chorus bridge… it’s kind of weird the way the song is formatted. So I feel like it is something that has kind of pushed forward a little bit, like ‘Deftones 2020′. But it had these familiar things as well.”
When speaking of the earliest writing sessions for “Ohms“, he stated that the group’s core trio of guitarist Stephen Carpenter, drummer Abe Cunningham and himself were the only ones involved. He described it as being part of an experiment to “get back to basics”—a decision that seemingly influenced once again working with producer Terry Date. Date of course previously helmed several of the band’s early albums. Speaking of the initial writing, Moreno offered:
“I didn’t even bring a guitar, I just setup a microphone. Steph had his guitar cabinet and Abe setup his drums and us three were in a little triangle. I wanted to see just basic… I wanted to experiment, basic, with us three in a room, like we were in Steph‘s garage when we were kids.
Like what would happen without all the—I mean obviously it’s not like we didn’t want Frank and Sergio involved—but I wanted just the core to see what happens, especially since our last record [“Gore“] was a little disjointed because of Stephen‘s… he wasn’t that involved in the initial foundation of the songwriting.
So I really wanted to make sure that was something that was present and more than anything it was just like bonding. It was really rad for us three to be in a room and talk shit and just play and make noise.”
Moreno was later asked if he ever watches videos of his past live performances, to which he replied:
“I can’t watch them. I should, I mean it probably would be beneficial. But I’ll just sit there and critique the shit out of whatever and then all the wind in my sails will just be gone… There’s some years that we weren’t at our best—especially live—and it’s hard to watch that stuff.”
“Ohms” will be released on September 25th.
