Photo by Jimmy Fontaine

Deftones are arguably a bigger deal today in the year 2025 than they were in the ’90s when walking through your high school hallways most certainly had you met with some kid in a White Pony logo t-shirt and JNCO jeans. As the well-ahead-of-their-time gods of the heavy-gaze blueprint, their influence on today’s metal and hardcore adjacencies is glaringly obvious — a recent sold out arena tour that brought Massachusetts next-gens Fleshwater out with them was evidence of that — and with the arrival of their 10th studio album, private music, now on the horizon, it’s of course an interesting experience hearing how they’re capitalizing on their new found canonization within alternative rock’s iconoclast realm.

Lead single and opener “my mind is a mountain” sizes up to its title, even if the band could have easily gotten away with delivering more of the same. Across its monochromatic atmosphere, frontman Chino Moreno tames a destructive psyche while mastering nature’s most destructive forces within the eye of a heavy whirr which melds dense guitar feedback, static-radiating synthesizers, and barreling rhythm into the path of the storm with anthem. “Now wе sail / The storm implodes / Exploring your fate / Now wе sail, starting now.” If anything, Deftones are looking at this career chapter as if their journey is just beginning.

Edited by: Rizz

Deftones’ private music will be released August 22nd on Reprise Records / Warner Records.