Photo by Travis Schneider

Making their Coachella debut in the Outdoor Theater last night, Deftones delivered a concise, albeit memorable set for their highly-anticipated showing out in California desert. Compiling a collection of tracks that covered some of the fundamentals of their catalog, greatest hits like "Digital Bath, "Change (In the House of Flies)", "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)" and "My Own Summer (Shove It)" all made the cut. 

Among the highlights on the night, the band submitted a rendition of "Combat" from the 2006 LP Saturday Night Wrist - marking the first time the band has included the song in the setlist for more than a decade. Additionally, Deftones performed their version of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" live for the first time ever - a play that proved to be the a resounding highlight of the evening overall. 

Prior to taking the stage, frontman Chino Moreno and drummer Abe Cunningham sat in for a backstage interview with Nicole Alvarez of Los Angeles radio station 106.7 KROQ. Among the biggest takeaways, Moreno revealed that the band has been working on their tenth full length studio record. In fact, Moreno shared that all of the instrumental portion of the album is complete and he is set to begin recording vocals. 

As transcribed by ThePrp, Moreno said, “We haven’t really talked much about it. We’ve just sort of been working on and off over the last year and a half. Like, from when we first started writing, to basically where we’re sitting right now, is we have a whole record recorded, all musically. And it’s pretty much my job right now to finish up the vocals.

I have, obviously, this show again [‘Coachella‘] next week. And then straight after that I go back home again to Oregon, and I go up in the studio.

So then as long as that takes… I hate to like put a definite timeframe [on it.] ‘Cause you know, we’re not really in a rush. We want it to be great — I think that’s most important. But it is coming. Yeah, it’s really good. We’re really excited with what we’ve been working on. Everybody’s jazzed.”

Further elaborating on the progress of the record, Moreno shared the band entered the process refocused after an extended stretch of live touring. 

“I feel like overall, its just an invigorated kind of sound. We went in, and everybody, it’s kind of [like] what I was saying earlier, after all these years you go in… We hadn’t written a record since like pre-COVID I think when we were last in the studio.

So it’d been a while since we had actually…. We’d been playing shows, but we really hadn’t gotten into that start being creative [process.] The creative part to me is always kind of the funnest part. Performing’s great, but coming up with something out of nothing, that feeling can not be topped.”

See the complete interview with Nicole Alvarez of KROQ below.