Today, alt-metal legends Deftones released their first album in five years, private music. As a result of that, frontman Chino Moreno has been doing some press, which has given fans some clarity on things like Stephen Carpenter's absence from tours and the fate of their unfinished album Eros.
In an interview with Metal Hammer, Moreno admits that he still doesn't have all the facts for why cofounding band member Stephen Carpenter stepped away from the band regarding international touring. Last year, Carpenter opened up about flight anxiety and stress. Moreno has some new supportive comments about the whole thing.
“I don’t want to speak for him. And even if I could, I still don't have an answer,” Chino said. “Really I don’t. It’s still something that I think he is figuring out. And if he does have an answer, I think it’d be great if one day he would share it. But yeah, we support him. We have to. He’s our friend. And his health, be it physically or mentally, always takes the forefront of anything.”
The singer added: “It’s sad, I want him onstage with us at every show. If you ask me what I prefer, I want him there every day, every time we do anything, with the band. But it literally comes down to: there’s two ways to deal with it. We accept what he can and will do, or we just don’t play. And we want to play."
Moreno also replied to questions that fans submitted to The Guardian. He answered queries about occult themes and symbolism that show up in the music ("It’s unconscious"), what music he listened to when he was 22 ("Portishead, Unkle, DJ Shadow and Tricky"), and his creative process.
One question specifically asked about the band's unfinished sixth album Eros, which was forsaken after bassist Chi Cheng entered a coma in a 2008 car crash; he passed away in 2013 due to complications from the accident.
This is his answer to whether the album will ever eventually come out:
We’re always asked about Eros. It will most likely never see the light of day. That would involve going back to that period and resurrecting unfinished things, and somehow bringing them to completion. 'Dallas' is the only song that was anywhere near finished. This new album started with ideas we’d been working on alone, through the pandemic. And when we got together to actually start making the record, none of us wanted to look back at those ideas from the pandemic – we wanted to capture the moment we’re in today. So going back to try to capture what was happening back during Eros, and finishing those ideas, doesn’t really make sense.
private music is out today via Reprise/Warner.
