Deftones

Most people lump the Deftones with nü-metal bands because they were one of the first to experiment with the hip-hop/heavy metal fusion. Whether you agree with that categorization or not, the Deftones are the only band from that group that is still valid artistically right now. Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit may have sold more records, but they don’t have anything left to say, if they ever even had anything to say to begin with. So how do the Deftones stay focused and relevant after all these years? By being honest with themselves, constantly challenging themselves and maintaining the brotherhood they’ve built with each other. It hasn’t been easy, and they’ll tell you they were close to shutting down shop and calling it quits while spending the last three years in the studio, but here they are, about to release the most important and quite possibly best album of their career, Saturday Night Wrist.  

    “It was difficult. It took three years to make, and that’s a ridiculous amount of time,” says drummer Abe Cunningham. “There was no communication. We really had a difficult time and came very close to breaking up. This is what I do, it was my dream, so I always used to be uncomfortable thinking that it could be over. It got pretty heavy, but things work in strange ways and we’re better now for it. We’re best friends and we’re brothers and we needed to tell each other that.”

    Singer Chino Moreno’s unhappiness with his vocal parts was one of the main factors that put the band’s future in jeopardy. Eventually, he abandoned the whole process and went on tour with a side project, Team Sleep. The rest of the Deftones were left wondering if he’d ever return.

    “Team Sleep are very dear friends of all of us so it shouldn’t have been anything competitive, but it became very threatening when Chino decided to go on tour with them,” Cunningham says. “We were like, ‘Finish your vocals before you leave,’ and he didn’t so that’s when it got extra tense. He went away for one month but that turned into four months without finishing the record. It became iffy because none of us knew what was going on. We all became hurt and pissed off… We had put so much into this so far and we just left it floating and sinking. But looking back now it was necessary for him to leave and get away from this project, then come back with a clear head and dive into it.”

    For his part, Moreno says leaving was the only thing he could do. 

    “I only had a few good vocal ideas at the time,” he says. “It had a lot to do with my personal life, but I didn’t like what I was coming up with vocally. It was all too dark and too personal. I wasn’t enjoying singing. I wanted to hide behind the guitar and I didn’t feel like writing words. After all these years with the Deftones, I never really played with other musicians, so for me Team Sleep was very therapeutic and it wasn’t like a job or people looking over my shoulders. There was no fanbase to make happy. It was a way for me to step away from this record. When I came back I took a look at all the stuff we’ve been working on and the ideas started coming out. I didn’t want to be the person holding everyone up, but what’s the use of making anything if it’s just for the sake of making it? I started contemplating why I was doing this — because I want to do it or I have to do it?”

    The lack of communication was tearing the band apart, but no one would acknowledge it until Moreno returned and their management called the band into a meeting in a Los Angeles hotel. “Once we met up and sat down, the first thing I had to ask them was, ‘Do you really want to do this, do you want to invest the time of your life to make this music?’” says Moreno. “I needed to hear that everyone was really into it. And they asked me the same question.”

    If you think this sounds like Metallica going through psychotherapy in the film Some Kind of Monster, you’re not alone.

    “I watched that movie during the record-making process and my jaw dropped,” Moreno says. “It was exactly what we were going through. They were making music but they weren’t happy, they were doing it just for the sake of making another Metallica record. You could tell it was a dark time for them. And we were going through the same thing. Sometimes you’ve got to fall down to your lowest point to realize where you’re at and then climb out of it and it can be one of the most therapeutic things.”

    After having decided that they do indeed still want to be in a band together, the Deftones set on finishing the record they had started three years before. Moreno challenged himself lyrically just as much as the rest of the band challenged themselves sonically, and the Deftones came up with a balanced dose of aggression and sweetness, loudness and serenity, barking and melody. Saturday Night Wrist is often haunting and emotional, but also heavy, guttural and intense.

    “The only preconceived thing was we didn’t want to make a record that was recorded in the same time and same place,” Moreno says. “It had to be a rollercoaster ride of different sounds, moods and emotions. The dynamics are one of our favorite things.”

    If they wanted to record in multiple locations, they got their wish and then some. In an attempt to freshen up their style of work, they did not use their usual producer, Terry Date (Soundgarden, Pantera), and instead got an even more famous one, Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd). They started working in their studio in Sacramento, then moved to a rented mansion in Malibu and then moved again to Connecticut.

    “Terry is great, but we decided to work with somebody more opinionated who comes in and guides us in another direction,” says Moreno. “Bob started rearranging stuff on the spot. It was good for us, because we’ll keep on screwing around with things and we need someone to give us a regimen and show us a different perspective.”

    But they soon realized that some of Ezrin’s suggestions took the band’s sound into a direction they considered too soft and almost pop-y. When Moreno returned from the Team Sleep tour, the Deftones finished the record back in California with one of their friends, Shaun Lopez (formerly of Far), as producer. “It didn’t work out in the end with Bob,” Moreno says. “We ended up finishing it ourselves, and that was a really smart thing.”

    Usually Moreno gives the songs working titles and then at the last minute changes all of them before the album goes to print. This time he only changed some titles of songs that had a deep connection with his personal life.

    “U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B, Select, Start,” originally named “Interlude,” was the code for an old video game Moreno used to play as a kid. “To call it ‘Interlude’ would be too simple, so I figured I’d give it a more personal and a bit more light-hearted name,” he says.

    “The Earth” will now be released as “KimDracula”—Moreno’s e-mail name during the recording. “At the beginning of making this record I was getting a little crazy and experimenting with drugs a bit, seeing how whacked out I could get, and I took that e-mail moniker. That’s my split personality, I guess. It didn’t work out too well,” he says with a laugh. “There were a lot of things I was going through — a divorce and a lot of personal things that made me not too happy inside, but I didn’t want to bring that into the record. It was hard to keep my feelings from creeping in, but it is a lot more metaphoric. I tried not to be so dry, but paint it up a little bit.”

***

The Deftones have had their share of press controversies as all-too-eager journalists read too much into Chino’s comments, and he would gladly not deal with that stuff ever again.

    “I like people to ask me about songs and lyrics and less about the stuff that doesn’t matter. Last record, they were asking me what I thought about Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Korn. I don’t even listen to them, but when I said I didn’t have an opinion all of a sudden magazines wrote that I’m talking shit or dissing other bands so every interview after that was all about that.”

    And all the attention didn’t even seem to increase their sales. Deftones don’t make their money out of selling records; they’re a hard-working live band that lives for the road. Even though all their previous four albums went gold or platinum, they’ve only sold a total of four million records in the United States. “If we keep on trying to push ourselves forward and a little bit left of where we went last time, I just want to be recognized for that,” Moreno says.

    And this time it seems the stars are aligned for that recognition to finally come to the Deftones. White Pony climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard chart, then the self-titled Deftones hit No. 2. With Saturday Night Wrist chock-full of potential strong singles, this may be the record that puts the Deftones on top of the chart and more importantly, their best work yet.

    “There have been so many versions and different arrangements that it was driving me insane so I stopped listening to it,” Cunnigham says. “But now that I got the mastered version, I played it in my car and it sounded really cool. I do think it’s our best record.”

    Moreno agrees.

    “I started to think that just recently,” he says. “It’s not like our last record. Our greatest up to now…well it’s hard to say that. My favorite record had been Around the Fur [their second], because we didn’t put too much overanalysis into it, we wrote and recorded it really fast and there’s something really genuine about that. I hope we can do that again. I’m not too fond of spending years making records.”

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