Camila, a 16-year-old highschool pupil in Los Angeles, holds her cellphone out, display screen dealing with up, enjoying a grainy video of Deftones acting on a late-night speak present in 1999. The clip has the jumpy, staticky, lo-fi high quality of VHS tapes from that period. “This popped up on TikTok,” she says. “It seems outdated time-y. It made me really feel like I ought to have been born in that point.”
Subsequent to Camila, her good friend Miley, additionally 16, varieties “Deftones” into TikTok on her personal cellphone and flicks upward via the movies that load. One exhibits a younger lady strolling via nature, headphones on, singing alongside to a Deftones tune. “Cool and attractive is the vibe they offer off on TikTok,” Miley says.
Paola, their different good friend, says she was launched to the band by somebody in center college—“Earlier than TikTok.” She remembers listening to longtime followers bristle on the band’s rediscovery. “[They] didn’t like folks discovering them on TikTok as a result of they mentioned, ‘That is from our time.’”
If the three-decade-old group’s reputation in 2025 is any indication, Deftones are usually not certain to a selected period. The band’s critically and commercially acclaimed tenth album, Personal Music, topped rock charts globally and entered the Prime 5 of the Billboard 200. It’s additionally nominated for greatest rock album on the Grammys—the band’s fourth nomination total, together with a 2001 win for Greatest Steel Efficiency for “Elite.”
In accordance with The New York Occasions’ August 2025 characteristic on the band, Deftones’ resurgence is just a few years outdated, bolstered partially by renewed curiosity in nu-metal. Early 2000s songs like “Cherry Waves,” “Gap within the Earth,” and “Change (Within the Home of Flies)” have develop into social media favorites, with the latter surpassing half a billion performs on Spotify. The newspaper additionally reported that “final yr, 50,000 tickets to a Deftones and System of a Down co-headlining present in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park bought out in 90 minutes.”
The group’s present elevated standing is the end result of 30 years of group constructing—albeit unintentionally. There are as many various entry factors to Deftones as there are followers. Morgan, 32 and queer, mentioned she first heard “Change (Within the Home of Flies)” through the intercourse scene in Queen of the Damned, which she watched in 2009, seven years after the film’s launch. She recollects, “I assumed, ‘That is so cool. That is so attractive.’ The Deftones’ sound turned related to being cool and younger perpetually.”
Bryan, 17,—neurodivergent and a burgeoning drummer—heard “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” within the automobile. “It had a really energetic feeling, like a film nearly,” he says. “The best way Chino Moreno’s voice sounded, starting gradual and quiet after which loud and energetic.”
Since then, Bryan has ended up in a Deftones wormhole. His favourite album is Saturday Evening Wrist, and from Personal Music, he notably likes “Infinite Supply” for its “trippy feeling, just like the trippy background on That ’70s Present.”
On NPR’s “All Issues Thought-about” this previous August, Moreno mentioned, “…these songs have been written earlier than they [new fans] have been born, and there’s one thing in what they’re listening to that they’re connecting with.”
That breadth carries over to their one-day Día de los Deftones pageant, which marked its sixth iteration this previous November. The vibe displays each the band’s Latin heritage and the wide-ranging tastes which have lengthy knowledgeable their music. On curating the pageant, Moreno advised Revolver, “I equate it to creating a mixtape, however with dwell teams, bringing completely different genres collectively.” This yr’s lineup featured Clipse, 2hollis, Rico Nasty, Deafheaven, Régulo Caro, Ecca Vandal, Glare, College, and Deftones themselves, who, at their very own pageant, play prolonged units that embrace deep cuts and rarities.
Their catalog is so hefty, they don’t want to write down one other tune. They may tour primarily based on their first handful of albums alone, reinvigorating audiences with reissues.
Personal Music is the primary Deftones album recorded with a sober Moreno. It additionally marks the primary look of bassist Fred Sablan (from Marilyn Manson) and the band’s third collaboration with producer Nick Raskulinecz. That established working relationship formed the periods, in accordance with drummer Abe Cunningham, who advised Kerrang!: “…when you have got that belief constructed and Nick suggests one thing you strive it. It is likely to be wonderful.”
That sense of belief extends past the interior workings of Deftones to their cross-generational, world group. Their grind has been regular, rooted in bonds fashioned when the members have been younger youngsters in Northern California. On the time of their 1995 debut, Adrenaline—the primary metallic album launched on Madonna’s Maverick label—the band have been steadily slotted into the nu-metal class. However Moreno’s oft-cited love for Depeche Mode, the Treatment, Sade, Cocteau Twins, the Smiths, and even Duran Duran and Tradition Membership helped form an alt-metal sound that resisted straightforward classification and set Deftones other than their friends.
That eclecticism has widened their viewers, creating factors of entry for listeners who may not in any other case interact with heavier music. “We’ve all the time made a relentless determination to not date ourselves with the music we make… we simply wished to have our personal id. So we’d make sure inventive selections to strive to not fall too deep into any class,” Moreno advised The Guardian.
On the similar time, it’s the throughlines of their sound that hold followers returning.
Jason, 50, a fan because the ’90s, says he first encountered Deftones whereas residing in Sacramento, tipped off by locals and native radio. He calls Personal Music “a pleasant mix of all of the issues Deftones do nicely over time in a single album.” His 11-year-old son, Rielan, identifies the album as “the albino snake.”
Whereas Personal Music is known as for a folder of tune concepts on Moreno’s pc, not lots of these concepts made it to the ultimate album. The Deftones magic occurs when the members are collectively, in accordance with Moreno.
Deftones’ music is an trustworthy reflection of who they’re and the place they arrive from, which resonates throughout races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and generations. The band’s unwavering perception of their artwork sustains a deep, lasting reference to their viewers.
Moreno mentioned within the Revolver interview: “Simply the music issues at this level. We sit round, we speak quite a bit, and bullshit quite a bit amongst the inventive a part of it, however it doesn’t really feel like a job. We’re all very grateful that after so a few years we even have the chance to do it, and that individuals care.”
