Deftones
Location: OVO Hydro
Deftfones are the Grammy award winning metal legends. Coming to Glasgow’s OVO Hydro on 13th February 2026 with support from Denzel Curry and Drug Church.
Too cerebral for nu-metal, and too raucous for the minimalists, when Deftones emerged in the 1990s, they demonstrated what it really means to defy categorisation. And then they kept doing it.
Originating in Sacramento, California in the late 1980s, Deftones’ emergence on the scene in some ways mirrored the sound that would eventually put them on the map; pensive and brooding, until suddenly, an explosion. Comprising Frank Delgado, Stephen Carpener, Abe Cunningham and their inimitable frontman Chino Moreno – a line-up that has formed the core of the band since 2001 – they rose to prominence in an era where metal was struggling to redefine itself, and left that era transcending the very blueprints they helped to create.
From the band’s 1995 debut record, Adrenaline, the sound that would separate them from their peers is legible, if in a germinal form: A quiet intensity that’s both tight as piano wire and yet ambient in texture. Their follow up, 1997’s Around the Fur, would further refine this template, producing the band’s earliest hits and enduring fan favorites like the thumping ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’, as well as ‘Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)’. With crisp, rolling melodies enveloped in Moreno’s haunting, droning vocals, they had the sound. It was only a matter of time.
White Pony
It would be the turn of the millennium, and the release of the seminal White Pony, that would see Deftones elevated to the level of metal cognoscenti; a sprawling, magisterial work that carries the listener between blistering flurries of rap metal-inflected bangers to expansive, atmospheric epics that don’t just run the continuum from quiet to loud, but collapse it entirely. Little wonder the album would not only go platinum, but also earn them a Grammy for Best Metal Performance for the song ‘Elite’.
Understandably, the album’s runaway success produced a gruelling tour schedule, resulting in damage to Moreno’s vocal chords that led him to pursue professional vocal training. Not content to rest on their laurels, the band’s self-titled follow-up, released in 2002, failed to reach the heights of its predecessor at first, but has since been canonized for its subdued and expansive soundscapes.
Falling out of favour
By the mid-2000s, the nu-metal explosion through which the band had made their name was falling out of favour with both critics and the listening public. But where other outfits faded in relevance or struggled to redefine their sound, Deftones’ sonic signature continued to both evolve and unfold. 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist saw the band take a more contemplative direction, influenced in part by Moreno’s own substance abuse and relationship issues. The attendant strain on the band’s internal cohesion is audible in the record’s detached and alienated soundscapes, instrumentation travelling long distances to meet in an indeterminate centre.
As the long noughts rolled into the 2010s, the band would not so much settle into a groove as circle a territory that, by now, was thoroughly theirs to claim. The release of Diamond Eyes in 2010 would be their biggest hit since their self-titled release, accruing acclaim from fans as well as critics, some of whom were only just beginning to appreciate how thoroughly the band had transcended their nu-metal roots. Subsequent releases – 2012’s Koi No Yokan and 2016’s Gore – felt like confident dispatches from industry veterans; calm but assertive reminders that this was a band that knew how to play to its strengths, because they were strengths no other band even had.
Ohmns
With the release of Ohms in 2020, three whole decades on from the band’s original formation, Moreno et al were a group fully in their element. The drumskin-tight album, clocking in at just over 45 minutes in length, is a strident and assertive work by a group that no longer needed nor expected introductions. Acquiring designations from shoegaze and alt-metal to post-rock and dream pop, a band that arose from one of the most typecasting genres in music history had now conclusively smashed any box in which they might have been placed. When genrefication fails, there’s only one summary that works: It’s Deftones.
Private Music
Now, with the release of their first full-length record in five years, private music, Chino Moreno and the rest of the crew are embarking on a world tour that must feel like something between a victory lap and a family reunion. A band that took its nu-metal designation and contorted the genre’s confines until a punchline was turned into an art form now steps out onto the world’s largest stages to reconnect with fans who, through it all, knew that no matter how many rapped verses, whip-sharp snares and dissonant hooks might be laced throughout the songs, that this was a different beast entirely. With their three decade-long career having been defined by defying expectations, it would be foolish to make promises of what to expect. Except for one thing, of course: It’s gonna be huge.
