Thirty-seven years since their first jam sesh, Deftones are as popular as ever. In 2023, they were rocking Jersey’s 4,500-cap Stone Pony Summer Stage; this April, they sold out Madison Square Garden. There was no new album announced, not even new music. What happened?
Anyone who acts like they understand it all is lying, but everyone seems to agree the answer involves “TikTok” and “shoegaze.” Deftones have been wielding the latter as a back-pocket influence almost as long as they’ve existed. It helped them outgrow their rap-rock roots and Trojan Horse indie snobs into realizing turntable-wielding Y2K era metal bands actually had some pretty cool ideas. Deftones recently did a freaking Heaven by Marc Jacobs collab, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t happen if shoegazey tracks like “Sextape” and “Cherry Waves” weren’t shooting up their Spotify page. Dovetailing with the #deftones craze, shoegaze blew up on TikTok over the past few years, to the point that Gen Z shoegazers are now releasing their major-label debuts. It would have been easy for Deftones to check Google Trends, crank the reverb just so, and reap the algorithmic rewards of ~~~a very vibey deftones shoegaze album~~~.
Deftones didn’t do that. Of course they didn’t. Deftones didn’t become the exalted alt-metal unicorns they are by cashing easy checks, and private music, their first LP in five years, is distinctly metal Deftones. It’s got the shoegazey signifier of an all-lowercase title and tracklisting, but there’s a snake on the goddamn cover. private music is a sonic cousin of 2020’s Ohms, the aggressive, much-needed course corrector after 2016’s tepidly-received Gore. Chino Moreno and the gang sound hungry, and Nick Raskulinecz’s production sounds heavenly. It’s all very Deftones, and it’s all very good.
As popular metal shifts focus from the riff to the breakdown to mostly diminishing returns, private music reminds you why Deftones resonate as a riffs band. The album is one filthy sequence of notes after another. Moreno contributes some guitarwork, but this is the wheelhouse of lead guitarist Stephen Carpenter, who seems revitalized here. In last month’s full-band interview with Zane Lowe, Carpenter revealed he’s cleaned up his life after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and feeling so low he nearly fell over during Deftones’ 2024 Coachella set. It seems private music was written during some pretty dark times for Carpenter, so it’s great to hear he’s doing better. He sounds like a monster on this thing.
Carpenter & co. hit hardest on “milk of the madonna,” private music’s best song. The axe man is on fire and Moreno is “ON FIIIIIIIRE!,” with drummer Abe Cunningham and bassist Fred Sablan thrashing along. It’s plenty catchy for rock radio, with a head-spinning arsenal of riffs. Chuggers like “ecdysis” and “souvenir” scratch a similar itch, and scratch it well. “cut hands” is classic fight-or-flight Deftones, with a jolt of the ol’ Adrenaline swagger. Yes, there’s a song here that sounds like Adrenaline, Deftones’ nü metally 1995 debut, and Moreno’s ready to throw punches: “CUT ME UP! CUT ME UP!”
Speaking of Moreno, he sounds glorious. Just listen to his upper register on “milk of the madonna” and “souvenir.” All over the album, his delivery jumps from impressionist to brutalist. He’s been honing this vocal move for years, and now his control of it is just masterful. There are uneven albums in Deftones’ catalog where Moreno was admittedly too disengaged to steer the ship; this now marks several albums in a row where he’s been in top form. Deftones described private music as a meditation on “the beauty and peril of nature” and “a journey beyond the physical realm” and… sure, why not! That’s Moreno’s specialty. Who better to lead this vision quest than the guy who wrote a hit song about telling the sun to go fuck itself.
Despite its focus on the heaviest version of Deftones, private music has its share of lighter, nu-gazier moments, which makes sense considering Raskulinecz also produced 2010’s Diamond Eyes and 2012’s Koi No Yokan. But these elements are mostly a contextualizer, Moreno’s diverse influences and Frank Delgado’s keyboards and samples coloring in the scenery. The exception is “i think about you all the time.” The best word I can think of to describe it is oceanic. It builds one hazy ripple of a riff into a whole epic that sounds like drifting from shore until you lose sight of land. For recent converts who discovered Deftones via #shoegaze, this should be an instant classic.
While most of private music works familiar Deftones territory, it isn’t without its little surprises if you know where to look. After years of dapping up Hayley Williams but scarcely sounding like Paramore, the fizzy riff on “infinite source” sounds like it could have been right at home on any of that band’s first few records. Particularly, it made me want to queue up “Hallelujah.” I was not expecting to think of a 2007 Fueled By Ramen release on first listen of a new Deftones album, but this is where 2025 has brought us.
Deftones’ unlikely friendships further prove how much they’re outpacing most of their metal cohort. For a lot of big metal bands that have been kicking as long as Deftones, “please don’t be embarrassing” is just about the best their fans can hope for. Deftones’ bar is significantly higher. Which is why I’m disappointed private music didn’t shoot its shot a bit more. Not by chasing some trend, but building one of these killer riffs into a big, transecndent chorus, the kind you know on first listen is going to anchor Deftones sets for years to come. I love Deftones for not being predictable, but another thing I really love is “Swerve City.”
Deftones never relished being a singles band, though, and private music is just fine without one song towering above it. It’s a very good album, and if you already love Deftones, it’s hard to imagine private music changing that. The best shoegaze albums will always transcend, but it’s unclear what will become of the current craze Deftones somehow found themselves in. Like snakes survived the dinosaurs, Deftones are poised to outlast.
private music is out 8/22 via Reprise/Warner.
