For several years now, alternative metal icons Deftones have seen their stock rise significantly as younger generations have flocked to the band. Social media services like TikTok have played a significant role in helping introduce the group to countless new ears, leading to Deftones being elevated to arena headliners in the United States earlier this year.
It’s certainly not a common occurrence for a band to reach such heights several decades into their career, especially without any semblance of new music or intentionally backed singles to help bolster that push. However, it’s a reality Deftones have embraced, as they sold out numerous stops of their ambitiously booked 2026 headlining touring, much of which took place months ahead of announcing details for their new album “private music“.
That record, the band’s tenth overall, moved an 87,000 album-equivalent units in the United States amid its first week of availability on the charts this past August, landing it the the #5 slot on the Billboard 200. In an interview newly published online over at Metal Hammer that was conducted ahead of that album’s release, the band’s vocalist/guitarist Chino Moreno reflected on reaching new generations of fans and how the group have approached that influx of interest.
As Chino put it, the rising tide around the band even hit home for him in an amusing way. He relayed of that:
“The funniest thing is probably when my daughter’s friends started showing interest in our band. I was like, ‘Really?’ And back then, she was still in high school – she’s in college now. And then I was curious about it, because I’ve never had a TikTok account, so I didn’t see any of that physically. I was just being told about it.”
It’s an age-old tale in the music industry — and perhaps even more so on social media as a whole — to be hot one moment and dropped the next. However, with years of sustained accelerated growth behind them since the pandemic, Moreno feels like the support from social media may have galvanized into something stronger than a passing trend. He stated of that:
“Part of it could be a trend. But it’s been a good three or four years since the trend started. And it’s only growing, which is great, but also it’s unsolicited, too. I think if we were on TikTok and we were just like, ‘Yo, check this out’, and trying to market ourselves to the younger generation, it would probably come off that way. And the fact is that we don’t do that, it’s kind of what now is word of mouth, which is those platforms.”
Moreno also spoke about “private music“, his experiences with therapy and what led him to get sober in the chat, which you can read at the link mentioned above.
