Deftones' Chino Moreno, photo by Philip Cosores

While we know that Deftones have been working on a new album, the band members haven’t revealed much in the way of details on their ninth LP. In a new interview, singer Chino Moreno offers a few clues, comparing their new music to their 2000 effort, White Pony.

The last bit of news regarding the new album came in early December, when the band posted an aerial shot of their hometown of Sacramento on Instagram with the hashtags “#2019, #newmusic, #deftones.”



In the new issue of Kerrang! magazine (as transcribed by The PRP), Moreno was asked what music from the band’s past best represents what they are doing now, and he replied, “That’s a good question, I don’t know, and it’s hard to say. Where we are with our writing process right now, it’s really difficult for me to put a single look on what we’re doing. It’s morphing every day that we get together and write.”

He added, “We’re definitely getting into experimental sort of modes, which is the funnest phase that we get into. One of the biggest records in our career is obviously White Pony, and it’s our most commercially successful record, as well, but that was also one of our most experimental records, especially for the time when it came out. That record, making it was… what’s a good word to describe it? We felt really free.”

He continued, “We basically made whatever we liked, whatever was happening at that moment. It didn’t really go along with what was going on around us, as far as our contemporaries and where other music was.”

When asked if White Pony was a reaction to the nü-metal music of the time, Moreno said, “At the time, honestly, with bands like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach and what was to be coined nü-metal or whatever, that was at its height. And we probably made our most un-nü-metal record. I don’t know why we did it. Like I said, we were into experimenting more than we were trying to do something that we felt we already did.”

Turning his attention back to the band’s new music, he explained, “That’s why it’s hard to answer the question about the future and what comes next. But if anything I would say that [I’m reminded of] White Pony, that record in general, because it was probably us at our most experimental.”

As of now, no release date or any other details have been unveiled regarding Deftones’ new album. Moreno, meanwhile, composed a score for an installment of Hulu’s horror series Into the Dark. The episode, titled “I’m Just F*cking With You”, premieres April 5th on the streaming service.