The fact that we got a record deal was pretty scary, for me especially. Those are basically some of the first songs we wrote. What ended up on the first record, at that point it was our life’s work. I introduced those two dudes and we just started playing. He just more or less had a bunch of gear. And Stephen wasn’t really in a band either. Abe had been playing drums since he was a kid, but he was never in a band. We all skateboarded, so we all just hung out and talked about music all the time. And I knew Stephen, he grew up down the street from me. We were in 10th grade, and we started playing together in the garage just as friends and neighbors. That was a long ass time ago, especially because we started the band pretty young. “There’s not one of us individually that was sort of sitting back just going along.” Tamar Levine “Everybody firing on all cylinders,” he says. What’s clear, however, is that he remains committed to Deftones one quarter-century into their recording career. When Moreno was asked to revisit Deftones’ catalogue, he didn’t hold back, candidly assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the band’s eight studio records. “I haven’t seen any of them in six months.”

According to singer Chino Moreno, the band members also reconnected on a personal level after 2016’s somewhat disappointing Gore, hanging out more together than they have in a long while, before the pandemic made that impossible. In a sense, Ohms is a literal return to the band’s early days - the well-pedigreed producer Terry Date (Pantera, Soundgarden), who oversaw the first four Deftones records, is back in the fold after an absence of more than 15 years. Their latest, Ohms (due out September 25), is their strongest work in years, a return to form that finds them reconnecting energetically with their heavy, hard-rock roots. In the years since then, Deftones have continued to put out acclaimed albums that have put them outside the metal mainstream.

Around the time that many of their peers peaked on rock radio, Deftones put out 2000’s White Pony, an art-metal masterpiece that forever altered their career trajectory. But the genre classification never fit comfortably, as Deftones drew from a much wider range of influences than just metal or hip-hop - including everything from electronic to shoegaze to classic ’80s alternative rock - and also because of their longevity. When Deftones broke out in the late ’90s, they were frequently lumped in with the era’s nu-metal acts.

Rank the deftones albums