At its heaviest, to me it's a positive thing.'Ī quick tutorial for readers of a certain age on the concept of heavy. 'Even though our music might have sad points to it, or angry parts to it, it's not fueled by straight hatred, or revenge or pain or anything like that. 'I didn't have the greatest childhood in the world, but I didn't have a bad childhood,' says Moreno, 27. With a lot of these bands it's like, what-ev-er.' It seems to be a theme going through a lot of music, so it's hard for me to take seriously. 'Maybe a lot of people had bad childhoods and now they're just venting, the music is their way of therapy or something like that. 'There are a lot of bands now-it started with Korn-that seem like the root of their whole existence is pain and torment,' he says.

Moreno thinks that part of what sets the Deftones apart is the motivation behind the music. He writes the kind of deliberately obtuse and gruesome lines that lead gullible critics to hail the band as 'fiercely intelligent.' And front man Chino Moreno's lyrics are harder to get a read on than the uninspired rants of most rock screamers. Their sound is sometimes more moody than mad, changeable, even occasionally ambient on the new album. Listen to the Deftones' punishing music and you might be tempted to place this group in the Angry Young Band category, whose subsets include harrowing fury (Korn), cartoonish ferocity (Slipknot) and frat-boy belligerence (Limp Bizkit, et al.).īut the Deftones don't want to be lumped in with all those acts, which is somewhat understandable. The Deftones' previous albums, 'Adrenaline' (1995) and 'Around the Fur' (1997), went gold, but only after extensive touring.

Instead, these bands sell their albums the hard way: month after month on the road. The Deftones are one of a growing number of heavy rock acts that have managed to build an enormous audience with little to no radio or video play. 3 on Billboard's Top 200 chart, and its first-week sales-178,000-didn't surprise anybody. The band's new album, 'White Pony,' recently debuted at No. Welcome to the realm of the Deftones, the Sacramento quintet that's captivating a new generation of American rock fans. This is a Deftones show, where that kind of expression counts as audience participation. He is soaked with sweat, his hands clenching his contorted face as he screams. Inside the crowded Roseland Ballroom, where the guitar blast is so loud it's dizzying, a young man staggers away from the roiling mosh pit.

Korn and deftones albums