Arguably, Deftones are more popular today in the year of our Dark Lord 2025 than they were when they released their most commercially successful run of alt-metal classics back in the late ’90s. More shockingly, their influence resonates more deeply with next generation from of adjacencies of metal, shoegaze, and hardcore than most of the behemoths from the golden age of alternative. And to go one step further, they still sound ultra-modern in the context of today on private music.

The Sacramento band’s 10th studio album is a masterful display of the sheer sonic velocity in which the metal-gazing hydra-heads have the power to conduct riveting damage and seismic shifts throughout the atmosphere, even over 25 years after they broke new ground in the scene with White Pony. What’s apparent here however on standout tracks like “my mind is a mountain”, “infinite source”, and “milk of the madonna” is how they’re more directly anchoring a bold “pop” outline (by Deftones standards, that is…) into their gravitational weight. Tapping into deeper grooves within their craters and cracked wide heavens of their atmospheric ballads like “ecdysis” and “i think about you all the time”, they band is conquering the art of satiating the highest tiers of the arenas that they comfortably command now on sold out headlining tours.

As for their sound’s resolutely harder matter, songs like “locked club”, “souvenir”, and “cut hands” increases its density in their layering of lofty riffs and the degree of impact which drums and rhythm barrels through the speakers with. This could be, in parts, due to the fact that private music reunites Chino Moreno’s ascendent vocals and the band’s monochromatic electricity with the polished, iridescent effects of Diamond Eyes andKoi No Yokan producer Nick Raskulinecz. There’s absolute clarity heard within their metal dreams that turns private music into an infinite energy current from which every future heavy artist will continue to draw from. “We watch these grains dissolve,” Moreno swoons in on the final moments of closer, “departing the body”. There’s only truth to this observation when we’re hearing Deftones in peak stereo form.

Highlights: “my mind is a mountain”, “locked club, “milk of the madonna”

Deftones’ private music is available now on Reprise Records / Warner Records.

Buy | Stream