Deftones - private music (Album Thread)

[Deftones-argentina]

nice to see a new fan around here, welcome!

[Eros TBA]

infinite source fav track

[truthaddict]

I finally had a chance to listen to the album Friday night. 

Before Friday, I had only heard "My Mind Is a Mountain", then tried to avoid most other spoilers.

I think it is really good.  I'm really happy that Deftones is still putting out great music in 2025.  Just like all their other albums, this one has it's own vibe.  It has their distinct sound, but also goes in some directions they haven't explored before.  The song writing is really good.  Abe's Drums and Franks Synths/Samples are what surprised me the most. 

I am not sure where I rank with their other albums.  That is usually something I won't really think about for a few years.
____________________________________________________________
But I do have some critiques...

Disclaimer: I listened to a CD on some good quality speakers.

The mix/master on Private Music sounds a lot different from all their other albums to me.

The best way I can describe it... A lot of the bass sounds like it is just a constant low sine wave 808 coming from a synthesizer, that just keeps changing to the root note of whatever chord is being played.

It just feels like you are getting hit with a brick wall of bass all the way from the beginning to the end.  Which may have been intentional?  But it seems to crowd all the other instruments a lot and fatigues my ears more than any other album they have done.

I really don't want to be negative, but thought I would share.  Maybe someone else has mentioned something similar already.

Another Disclaimer: I am honestly not sure how much of this is caused by the style of bass playing and how much is the mix/mastering choice. 

Another Disclaimer: I'm really not trying to hate on the new bass player Fred. I have seen him play with Deftones live and he is great with that.  I absolutely don't want to jump to any conclusions of what happened with the previous bass player Sergio (because we will never know every detail), and am not trying to take any sides.

Another Disclaimer: I am a bass player, so probably pay too much attention to bass when I listen.

I've had the chance to spin this record a lot more times at home and driving around.  I really love it!

I think I was a little too harsh on it with my last comments.  I do have to admit that "Ecdysis" was the main song where the bass caught my ear on the first several listens.  But after each repeat listen, I have been enjoying the bass style more and more on other songs.  "Milk Of The Madonna" is another one with great bass.

I do hope on their next album that they have a few more "spacy" or "dubby" moments where they just let the drums and bass groove on their own.  At least for some song intros or bridges.

On my first several listens, "cXz" was not my favorite song... but now I love it.  I guess it just took my mind a few listens to absorb everything that was going on with the drums and really appreciate it. 

They all seem to be in top form for this album.  But lately, I have really been admiring Abe's drums.

This is what I love about Deftones albums... You can listen to them 100 times and keep noticing new details and finding new parts to appreciate.

[gavinkfox]

Haven't checked here for a while. Been enjoying the album a LOT. Been hearing rumors of another potential b-sides album though?

[gavinkfox]

Don't know how true the rumors are, unfortunately this place looks dead. Might have to wait a while for an answer

[Inkblades]

Don't know how true the rumors are, unfortunately this place looks dead. Might have to wait a while for an answer

Hopefully true, but it did originate from reddit, the same place that said in the last couple years that private music would have b-sides and feature Lance and also that they still want to put out Eros, so take it with a huge grain of salt.

[Penicks]

that 12-year old who was responsible for half of the posts in this thread has been awful quiet, ya think him discovering deftones six months ago was just a phase

[SenAM]

Massive 'Tones fan. Have listened to all nine previous albums to extreme levels of listening burnout. Here's my take on Private Music:

1. MMIAM: Decent opener, although very far from their best. I'd probably put this along the ranks of Swerve City and Prayers/Triangles if I'm being honest. Less ambitious than Genesis, even though the latter wasn't perfect either. The two things that caught my attention the most are the drumming pattern switch-up between verse and chorus, where Abe plays at double time(?), and the bridge, which is the most interesting part of the song melodically speaking. A little too short though, although the transition to Locked Club is good. Nice back-and-forth between the intro and the rest of the song, reminded me of Urantia a little bit. Rest of the song is lame as shit rhythm guitar-wise, though. Abe's snare sounds so uncharacteristically fat here, almost sounds like they sampled it partly. That put me off.

2. Locked Club: One of the very few songs on the album that still has some of that sexy mystery going for it, especially the chorus, which is easily the best part of it. Not a fan of Chino's megaphone-style monologue here and some of the lines even came off a little pandering and cringy to me ("So in love...with the calm...and the chaos!"). Opening riff sounds fat but it also gets old fairly quickly, like a lot of Steph's later output on his 8 string. The "I can feel it" part is not bad although it kinda ruins the darkness the song had building up in the chorus. This song is the worst offender in terms of mixing/mastering of the bunch. Abe's kit sounds like ass of how hard they flattened the transients. No bottom at all.

3. Ecydisis (or however it's pronounced): Quite a safe song for Deftones, although not bad either. First actual Fred feature on the album up to this point. His tone sounds rather crunchy and I enjoyed the groove at the intro. I've never liked this chorus. Chino comes into the chorus in such an awkward manner ("A SYMPTOM OF OUR PLAGUE!"). Lol, what? It doesn't even fit the right amount of syllables into the beat and it sounds really out of place, especially with that shouty kind of vocals he loves to do for whatever reason. This song almost doesn't have a bridge, it's a little bit a race to the chorus and I didn't appreciate that at all. For a song this fast I don't remember a single riff about it, so it makes sense when I heard Chino wrote almost all guitar parts in the album. I dunno...

4. Infinite Source: Popular opinion but yeah, one of the best in here. The verses are my favorite, when the entire band comes in and has this push-and-pull with Chino's vocals. Good melodies too. The chorus is a little generic but it fits well anyway. Nice bridge too. This song is mad bittersweet by the way. The double stop before the last chorus reminded me of 976-EVIL. The ending riff is super cheesy though.

5. Souvenir: Ehhh...just sounds like a dollar store version of Rosemary in a way. The only memorable part to me is the chorus, the one that plays after the pre-chorus has played twice. There's a ridiculous key change there they pulled off their ass that kinda gives me goosebumps, although it's a shame they didn't go any further with it. The outro is literally the same formula as Pompeji: one-minute Frank solo. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it, but you took five years to release a song like that?

6. CxZ: Cool chorus, has some interesting parts guitar-wise, but that verse is not it for Chino. I don't like his screams as of late due to his age but I'd genuinely rather he screamed instead of shouting. I know it's probably part of the emotion he wanted to convey but it just sounds so uncomfortable. No proper bridge either. This album lacks a lot of them, in general.

7. ITAYATT: Sort of memorable, although since I heard that guitar delay at the intro, I could hear this was a bit of a homage to Sextape, just less inspired overall. This might be the band's most stereotypical song ever lmao, especially in their later shoegazy, wall-of-sound style. I really don't want to say they took advantage of the new TikTok crowd that came around 2022-2023, but it kinda feels like it considering this song. I still like it, but it's such a conflict for me.

8. MOTM: This song is unde-fucking-niable and easily the best on the album. Great driving dissonance in the verses, Chino soars, Chorus grooves like mad and is infectious as hell. I'm on fire, 10/10. Reminds me a bit of Mein but with much better vocals and overall intent. I don't know who wrote this guitar track but if it was Chino again, I'll go ahead and say it's the best guitar writing Chino's ever done on his own. If it was Stephen though, it's his best writing since Ohm's title track, which is also an accolade for me since that's the exception in his case. Post-chorus is great and it keeps the anticipation going. My only gripe with the song is, aside from how fucking loud everything is, this song also lacks a proper bridge, what the hell? Why they didn't take chances in such a great composition? They just pulled off a clean guitar break with a ton of reverb and...back to the chorus again. Again, why?

9. Cut Hands: The closest to an Adrenaline/ATF remembrance track they've made. It's decent but not what I was looking for. It looks like Deftones have been having this sort of obligatory explicit track per album since KNY: in Koi it was Poltergeist (GOATed song btw), in Gore Doomed User, in Ohms This Link is Dead and here is Cut Hands. Chino raps and says "fuck you" like in the old days, take that however you will. The best part of the song is easily the bridge/breakdown, with Chino repeating "Cut me up" in the background. Great riff, and it sounded like the song was going somewhere else...but no. Right back to the chorus, which is nice but it makes it lose all the momentum it had in a similar way to what happened in Genesis. It's whatever.

10. Metal Dream: I don't know why but I love Chino's delivery on the verses here lol. Sounds a little cheeky but it was so cool, reminded me a bit of his vocal style on ATF. The chorus is great too, although definitely safe ground for them. No bridge either, Chino just keeps repeating the last lines of the chorus 'till they go into it right back again. Good song either way, although too pop. Sounds like something that would've been at home in any Crosses record.

11. Departing the Body: Ummmm...it's interesting, I guess? Definitely a step down from WHTY/Rubicon/Ohms, which were great closers all three in their own ways. This is one of the band's most doomy songs tempo wise. Also easily Chino's lowest pitched vocals ever, like it genuinely scared me upon first listen, I though I was listening to Michael Gira from Swans lol. I like the verses, I like Chino's melody but it feels like the song loses steam quite fast. Then they drop the band and pick it up again. Don't murder me but the way this song ends makes me feel it was super unfinished. Blue balls to the max. Also hilarious how in the thumbnail for the official visualizer of the song they literally copied the Spongebob floating meme I see on r/Deftones the entire fucking time. I loathe that part of the fanbase, it's such a cop-out.

[SenAM]

This album is good, but definitely not great. I liked Ohms a tad more, even considering its faults. Easily my least favorite Nick album and the worst produced of the three by far. Holy fucking shit, this thing gets to DR3 in a dynamic range scale on some tracks, Jesus. https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/224002

There's a shit ton of digital clipping all around the album, especially cracking guitars because of how hard they're hitting the merciless limiters. This thing's a flat 42-minute sausage, even more so than Gore. The instrument recordings and tones are better dialed in and fatter than Gore, but still, yikes...

I don't know id it's the Chino and company that have lost all hearing from touring over the years or just that the executives at Reprise have gone full predatory on the loudness targets they ask the engineers to reach. Not a good look either way.

[SenAM]

And lastly my album ranking absolutely nobody asked for:

1. Koi no yokan (HD Tracks version ftw)
2. White Pony
3. Saturday Night Wrist
4. Diamond Eyes
5. Ohms
6. Deftones
7. Private Music
8. Gore
9. Around the Fur (please don't slaughter me, I'm not the biggest fan of nu-metal)
10. Adrenaline

[Inkblades]

The only parts that sound overly-compressed to me are the verses on locked club and parts of souvenir. Sounds fine to me otherwise.

[SenAM]

It's definitely not just those two, the whole album suffers from this. Fuck, I've even heard distorting ride cymbals on Departing the Body, which is super bizarre. I've never heard clipping ride cymbals in any other rock adjacent album in my life, which is telling. Like some other user said around here, the songs are mad fatiguing to listen to, especially in one sitting despite how concise the album is.

Did Nick really produce this? Did fucking Rich Costey, of all people, really mix this? He was in charge of mixing instructions for Koi, so that's definitely a disappointment. Howie Weinberg mastered it, and so did he on Gore and Ohms too, so the mastering is probably not at fault. I wish this fucking trend went away. It makes everything sound toothless.

[Inkblades]

Not saying it's not happening on those other songs, just that those are the only two where it outwardly bothers me.

[Dawnofwar2010]

that 12-year old who was responsible for half of the posts in this thread has been awful quiet, ya think him discovering deftones six months ago was just a phase

Im 15, and i discovered deftones 3 years ago, do NOT diss me like that,

[976-EVIL]

that 12-year old who was responsible for half of the posts in this thread has been awful quiet, ya think him discovering deftones six months ago was just a phase

Im 15, and i discovered deftones 3 years ago, do NOT diss me like that,

Nothing but love Kiddo I'm sure.
To stay on point, Infinite Source may be a Top 10 Track for me. Beautiful...

[TwixPheonix]

Don't know how true the rumors are, unfortunately this place looks dead. Might have to wait a while for an answer

I wouldn't believe it for now but it seems very possible. Sounds like it could be out by summer 2026 so id watch out for that time frame if anything

[Dawnofwar2010]

that 12-year old who was responsible for half of the posts in this thread has been awful quiet, ya think him discovering deftones six months ago was just a phase

Im 15, and i discovered deftones 3 years ago, do NOT diss me like that,

Nothing but love Kiddo I'm sure.
To stay on point, Infinite Source may be a Top 10 Track for me. Beautiful...

Top 3 songs for me rn
1 Rats!Rats!Rats!
2 cXz
3 Poltergeist

On private music
1 locked club
2 cXz
3 ~metal dream

[Draken]

that 12-year old who was responsible for half of the posts in this thread has been awful quiet, ya think him discovering deftones six months ago was just a phase

Im 15, and i discovered deftones 3 years ago, do NOT diss me like that,

He missed you 

Nice top 3 btw. Poltergeist is underrated. I remember seeing Deftones open with Rats! and it was amazing, underrated song as well.

My current PM favorites are
1 MMIAM
2 Locked Club
3 MOTM

MOTM really grew on me but it is the stand out track on the album fs

[976-EVIL]

A Dome light is all that remains...

Seriously a top 5 album in the Catalog for me.

Frank and Abe own the record. Beautifully produced by Nick. Steph sets the groove.

[DefFsho]

This is true for another record or two as well, but I really wish Frank was louder in the mix, especially Ecdysis. His keyboard playing an atmosphere would make the songs a lot better if it were louder and it's really my only gripe