Review
Review
Deftones: Alt-metal mainstays’ London O2 Arena debut is momentous
Masters of noir-ish atmosphere prove they’re bigger, and better, than ever with elemental spectacle
After a cursory scroll on Instagram the night after Deftones demolished 20,000 sets of eardrums at The O2 Arena in London, seemingly every other vid was from the crowd’s POV of the Californian alt-metallers. Even Joe Jonas, oddly enough.
It’s no surprise really, given that Deftones are amid a major resurgence. Often too cerebral for their nu-metal peers – like the bolshy Frat boy riffage of Limp Bizkit or the tortured rap stylings of Linkin Park, both of whom are riding high on a revival too – they frequently simmered beneath the surface of mainstream adoration. Though their credibility remained intact after nu-metal fell deeply out of fashion, it’s only really of late that Deftones are getting their due as one of the most vital bands to come from the early 00s era.
Be it a TikTok-induced virality of certain tracks like ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ – of which the skin-tight snare drum intro never loses its cranium shattering potency – and ‘Cherry Waves’, Deftones’ uptick in popularity can also rightly be attested to their most recent album in last year’s private music. Songs from the album make up over a third of the setlist on the night, and the audience – that ranges from grizzled greebos to turtle-necked shoegazers to young baggy-jeaned bucks that may very well be attending their first ever gig – embraces the likes of ‘my mind is a mountain’ and ‘ecdysis’ as though they were well-trodded tracks from the band’s beloved back catalogue.
Masters of handling the friction between harshness and noir-ish atmosphere, Chino Moreno and his cohorts put on an elemental spectacle of epic proportions. There’s a valid reason kids on social media have dubbed the band ‘hornycore’ – Moreno’s muffled, breathy moan oozes with menacing sex appeal. Though, he had no time for any sort of posturing, and instead whizzed up and down and around the stage’s central staircase like a whirling dervish. At 53 years of age, his knees must’ve taken a real beating. The only time he and the band paused for breath was to wait for an incident in the crowd to get resolved, which in turn prompted arena-wide chants of ‘CHINO, CHINO’.
Deftones rumbled and riffed their way throughout, backed by visuals of natural phenomena and even a segment of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain at their trippiest juncture. Post-rock opus ‘Minerva’ was a glaring omission, though the band near-on conjured the rapture with ‘Change (In The House Of Flies)’. Of course, ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ was deployed during the encore. Not before Chino thanked everyone for showing up in their droves, almost three decades after they first stepped foot in England’s capital.
“To see everyone here, new and old, after nearly 30 years is amazing,” he expressed in disbelief. Well, Deftones are set to return to London again this summer at All Point East – us Brits just can’t get enough of them right now. Chino better believe it.
Photo Credit: Clemente Ruiz
