DEFTONES’ New Album Tenatively Due In September

DEFTONES singer Chino Moreno has offered an update on the band’s follow-up to 2016’s “Gore” album, which was recently recorded for a tentative late 2020 release. Speaking to Tim “Herb” Alexander for the PRIMUS drummer’s “Herb’s Happy Hour” show, Chino said (see video below): “We have a record that we finished maybe — I don’t know — about a month ago, we finally got all the final mixes of it. It’s supposed to come out in, I think, September. But we’re really happy with it. We worked with one of our longtime producer buddies, Terry Date, who did our first three albums. We hadn’t done a record with him in a while, and we went back in the studio with him, and it was super awesome.

“It’s kind of been weird, because we recorded everything — the music stuff — all last summer in L.A., and then we have been working on overdubs and vocals and mixing and all that stuff since then, so it’s almost been a year,” he continued. “But, obviously the last six months have kind of been doing everything remote [due to the coronavirus pandemic]… Mainly, it was just me. All the music stuff was done, so just mainly vocal stuff, and then mixing and mastering, going back and forth. But we finally finalized everything, I wanna say a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago now. It’s gonna be sweet. I’m excited about it.”

Moreno previously told Apple Music about DEFTONES‘ decision to reconnect with Date for the new album: “We’ve always wanted to go back and make records with him again… We love Terry. He’s pretty much been there since the beginning of us making records, and we just vibe with him really good. I mean, he’s super easy-going. He’s not a producer that is in there trying to push his ideas into what we’re doing other than just capture what it is that happens when we get together, as well as speaking up and telling us when stuff isn’t where it should be or whatever. So he’s just a great dude, and making this record with him was awesome. I think our main goal was to make sure that everybody in the band was involved, to an extent. I think our best records are when we’re all firing on all pistons, each one of us individually and collectively. So that was, I think, the only thing that we aim for, really.”

This past May, DEFTONES postponed their 2020 North American tour due to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe. The Live Nation-produced 20-date trek with GOJIRA and POPPY. was scheduled to kick off on July 27 and conclude on September 5.

DEFTONES have released eight studio albums to date and have sold over ten million albums worldwide.

DEFTONES is Moreno, drummer Abe Cunningham, programmer Frank Delgado, guitarist Stephen Carpenter and bassist Sergio Vega.

“Gore” bowed at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 in 2016, moving over 71,000 units first week and marking DEFTONES‘ highest chart position in 13 years. The band also curated, launched, presented and headlined its own festival, Dia De Los Deftones, in 2018. Selling out both installments to date, the eclectic lineups hosted everyone from FUTURE and CHVRCHES to GOJIRA and MEGAN THEE STALLION.