A welcome return
It’s been five long years since Deftones last dropped an album – 2020’s excellent Ohms – following which, the band weathered the vagaries of Covid, lost bassist Sergio Vega, and undertook a substantial tour. A period of inactivity followed, with the band re-emerging in late 2024 to announce a new tour, including a monster headline slot at London’s Crystal Palace Park.
Not only were the shows a runaway success, showcasing a band absolutely on top of their game but, between sets, the screens trailed Private Music – the first sign that a new album was, at long last, on the way.
It has been worth the wait.
The band’s epic showing at Crystal Palace may have been outstanding, but it seems that what’s past is merely prelude, because Private Music is an absolute stunner, effectively capturing the band’s documented strengths, while still finding new sonic landscapes to explore.
Formats
Private music comes on a range of formats – ultra clear vinyl, seaside blue vinyl (Amazon exclusive), numbered deluxe gatefold iridescent gold vinyl (Private Music store exclusive), metallic gold vinyl, deluxe CD photo book, regular CD, and cassette. Although the packages vary in terms of aesthetic, there’s no bonus material, so it’s very much down to which set appeals to you most, with our review covering the ultra-clear vinyl edition.
Housed in a standard jacket, with a nice 12 x 12 booklet included, it’s a solid no frills package, with the crackle-free platter placing the focus squarely on the music.
The album
Side one:
The album opens as it means to go on, with the tidal surge riffing of My Mind Is A Mountain, a track that is at least on passing terms with the band’s self-titled effort, combining punishing heaviness with an ethereal edge that neatly underscores the Deftones’ love of acts such as Dead Can Dance. In many ways, it feels like a reassertion of the band’s contract with their longstanding fans, capturing the very best elements of the Deftones’ post-White Pony sound, and it makes for a strong opening statement. Better still, the off-kilter percussion and stabbing riffs of second track Locked Club hark even further back – combining elements of their own Around The Fur with the stop/start groove of Helmet – making good on the promise implicit in the band’s recent live shows.
Having set a high bar for the album, the band deploys a stunning, descending riff on Ecdysis. With a splenetic verse and airy, melodic chorus, it’s Deftones in excelsis, and it’s easy to see why fans and critics both have been lining up to praise Private Music. Up next, the dynamic pulse of Infinite Source keeps moving things forward, the band digging into a chorus which nods, of all things, to the sky-scraping wonder the Pumpkins wove into their Machina album and, with Chino’s breathy vocals to the fore, it works brilliantly. Rather darker is the schizophrenic Souvenir, which trades the hard-edged riff that opens the piece for a stripped-back verse that allows Nick Raskulinecz’s nuanced production the chance to shine. It builds beautifully, too, the guitars returning with stunning force, but always with the band’s increasingly tight grasp on melody front and centre.
The side closes with the stabbing alt-metal of cXz which, emerging from the eerie shoegaze that wraps up Souvenir, sounds all the more bipolar as a result. Once again highlighting the band’s deft ability when it comes to weaving unsettling beauty in alongside driving riffs, it provides the first half of the album with a taut finale.
Side 2
Opening the second side, the calm waters of I Think About You All The Time are rarely disturbed by Chino’s dreamy vocals, the band carving out a piece of melancholy beauty, the atmosphere of which only torn asunder when Milk Of The Madonna explodes from the wings to claw at the listener with untrammelled ferocity. Another track that takes influence from the Pumpkins (think somewhere between Bodies and Zero), it’s a strong song, although it is one of the few here that would arguably benefit from a sharper-edged vocal. As if recognising the fact, the churning groove of Cut Hands is not only one of the album’s heaviest numbers, it also finds Chino edging back to a hip-hop infused delivery rarely heard since Adrenaline, further blurring the lines between past and present.
With the second half of the album racing past, the band treat us to the surprisingly eclectic -Metal Dream, which finds the Deftones neatly shifting between the jazz-tinged trip-hop of the verses and the more straightforward alt-metal of the chorus. Arguably a more divisive song, simply because it departs from the established template to no small degree, it has some sonic elements in common with Chino’s excellent Crosses, but with the harder, darker edge the band bring to the table, and it emerges as an album highlight in consequence. It segues neatly into the sparsely arranged introduction of Departing The Body, one final missive that soon expands into a suitably epic concluding effort that rounds out the album in style.
Conclusion
Private Music has been earning considerable acclaim since its release and deservedly so. The band’s tenth album, it not only feels like an effective summation of the Deftones’ career to date but it also nods towards a few new sonic avenues the band may take in the future.
With memorable melodies, powerful riffs, and a particularly strong performance from Chino, the album is further bolstered by a dynamic production job from Nick Raskulinecz, who does a fantastic job of marshalling the band’s disparate elements, channelling the visceral riffs into dark wedges of sound, while allowing the more nuanced aspects to shine through. In short, Private Music is both a triumph and a timely reminder of the band’s unique sound. 9/10
