Sacramento, CA · alt-metal · shoegaze-metal

Deftones

2 upcoming festivals

The band that dragged heaviness toward dream-pop — Chino Moreno's croon-to-scream over guitars tuned for atmosphere as much as impact.

Deftones formed in Sacramento in the late 1980s around vocalist Chino Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, bassist Chi Cheng and drummer Abe Cunningham. They emerged alongside the wave of heavy American bands that broke through in the 1990s, but quickly moved somewhere stranger, folding in the textures of shoegaze, post-punk and new wave alongside downtuned riffing.

The result is a sound built as much on tone and atmosphere as on force: Moreno shifting between a soft, high croon and a raw scream, Carpenter's low-end guitar layered with washes of effects, and Frank Delgado's samples and keyboards filling the space around them. Albums including Around the Fur, White Pony and Diamond Eyes are widely cited as touchstones by later heavy bands. Cheng died in 2013 following injuries from a car accident; Sergio Vega handled bass duties for much of the period after.

alt-metalshoegaze-metal