Deftones serve up the lush and the raw in equal measure as they stun Louder Than Life 2025.
Deftones aren’t fucking around tonight. Dropping a banger as big as Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) as an opening throw is a hell of a display of power. To immediately follow it with My Own Summer (Shove It) shows not only a fondness for bracketed subtitles, but also a knowledge that on their current form, it’s not necessarily what they’re playing, but how hard they go at it.
Which was the case when they hit the UK recently. The difference here is, Steph Carpenter is playing guitar, and they’ve got a new album, Private Music, out and ready to slink its way into the set. Lead single my mind is a mountain slots next to their two biggest hits early on like an old lover, its big, shiny riff a classic of Deftones’ sonic landscaping, while the live debut of ecdysis – backed by weird visuals of enormous psychedelic eyes – sizzles with raw, visceral energy.
It's already been remarked many times over the past year or so how match-fit Deftones are these days, but it’s worth mentioning again. Chino Moreno has the energy of a man 20 years his junior. Thirty, actually. He also has the same hunger as well, making it all count, it all mean something, His massive, almost constant smile is a welcome sight of someone truly invigorated by what he’s doing.
Visual-wise, there’s a lot of very cool atmospheric stuff going on with the big TV screens, melding band and art together. There’s smoke and colours and birds and mysterious, cool women, that sort of thing. But for all this high thinking, Deftones are at their best and most vibey when their naked humanity, red in tooth and claw and horn, takes the wheel. Hole In The Earth is a planet-sized jam, while Sextape is absolutely enormous.
When they go heavier, like with Headup, Seven Words or Engine No. 9, the punchier end of Deftones’ heaviness is writ large. And when Chino straps on a guitar and they unfurl a particularly lush Change (In The House Of Flies) – still their best song, btw – the power of the walls of guitar and his cracking voice is almost elemental.
Looking at the setlist, you could make an entirely new one just as good as songs they don’t play (Minerva? Come home, we miss you, babe). But that’s the wage of being as good as Deftones. A quarter of a century since they released their White Pony magnum opus, their ability to reach into you and grab your soul and your heart and your unmentionables is still undiminished. And through just doing their thing and doing it this well, they remain completely relevant and unique as ever.
