New Deftones Album With 'Invigorated' Sound Is on the Way: 'We Have a Whole Record Recorded'

A new Deftones album is on the way according to the group's frontman Chino Moreno.

"We have a whole record recorded," he told KROQ during a backstage interview at Coachella. "It's pretty much my job right now to finish up the vocals."

The singer will return to his home in Oregon and knock that out following Deftones' performance at the second leg of Coachella next weekend.

Moreno said the band is taking its time with the upcoming record.

"I hate to put a definite kind of timeframe, because we're not really in a rush," he said. "We want it to be great. I think that's most important. But it is coming and it's really good. We're really excited with what we've been working on."

The frontman added that Deftones has a newfound sense of vitality.

"I feel like, overall, it's an invigorated kind of sound," Moreno said. "It's, like, after all these years, you go in, and it's, like, we hadn't written a record since what was it? Pre-COVID when we were last in the studio.

"We've been playing shows, but we hadn't really got into being creative. The creative part, to me, is always kind of the funnest part of being in this band. Performing is great, but coming up with something out of nothing, that feeling cannot be topped."

The singer said getting back into the studio with his bandmates has been a pleasure.

"When you get in the room with your friends, we're laughing, we're having fun and then someone does something and then I react to it or they react to what I'm doing," he said.

"It goes in a circle and then, all of a sudden, we lift our heads up and there's something that exists that didn't exist before we walked in that room."

Deftones hasn't released a new LP since 2020's Ohms, which made it to No. 5 on the Billboard 200.

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The band has long been one of the most beloved acts to emerge from the nu metal scene, but interest in the band has grown dramatically in recent years through social media platforms like TikTok.

Deftones and System of a Down will headline a one-off show in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Saturday, Aug. 17 with support from the Mars Volta, Viagra Boys and VOWWS.

This will be the first after-dark concert in the park, which was the seventh most popular urban recreational area in the U.S. last year, National Geographic reported.

Concerts have been hosted there since 1967. Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Neil Young have all played the park.

Deftones formed in nearby Sacramento in 1988. The band dropped its first studio album Adrenaline in 1995 and followed that up with 1997's Around the Fur, which peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200.

The group's third album White Pony may be the most beloved record in their catalog. That's when elements of alternative rock became a more prominent element of the band's sound. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

Two of the group's subsequent albums made it to No. 2 on the chart, the 2003 self-titled record and 2016's Gore.