In a newly published interview with Los Angeles radio station KROQ, Deftones vocalist/guitarist Chino Moreno discussed the newfound wave of success the band have been riding since coming out of the pandemic.
While so many of their early peers from the nü-metal era have long-since plateaued, the music of the Sacramento, CA-based alternative metal band caught fire on social media services like TikTok, introducing the band to a hordes of younger listeners.
As such, 25 years after releasing their then career high with 2000s game-changing “White Pony“, the band have comfortably elevated to arena headliners. That interest from younger audiences and connecting with a subsequently wider audience has reinvigorated many aspects of the band’s profile and business, allowing them to operate at a larger scale and be more comfortable taking risks.
The resurgence in fan interest has also resulted in a long overdue round of industry accolades, with a wave of platinum and gold certifications for their recorded works being bestowed upon them this past July. When asked how they are taking that all in, Moreno told KROQ [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“It feels good, but I don’t think it’s something that… I think I kinda always had the mindset that it could go away at any moment as well, right? So I don’t ever invest too much of how I feel about us a band, or our music, or our records into that kind of stuff. It’s exciting, and it’s nice to know, and it is, how we literally are bigger than we’ve ever been in our almost 30-year existence. But it is exciting, we are very grateful. But I don’t think… Like, yeah, I think we are just in the moment, right? and enjoying it. Rolling with it.”
“We wanna live up to it as well, I think in our live shows, and this record [“private music“] that we made, it also makes us want to be better — or as best we can be. It kind of pushes you a little bit, everybody says this about us, well, let’s try to be that, you know, more than ever.”
Deftones‘ tenth studio album “private music” was released yesterday, August 22nd.
