Chino Moreno Talks New Deftones Album And White Pony 20th Anniversary Celebrations

With Deftones currently finishing up their highly-anticipated ninth album, frontman Chino Moreno has checked in with Zane Lowe for Apple Music's Beats 1, not only discussing the follow-up to 2016's Gore, but also potential plans to celebrate this year's 20th anniversary of White Pony.

“We just started the mixing process a couple of months back. It worked out as far as doing it remote,” Chino explains (via Revolver) of how lockdown has – or has not – impacted the process. “Our producer, Terry Date, who’s doing the record – he’s in Seattle. As a band, we’re all kinda spread out anyways. He’s just been working on it and then sending us stuff and we’ll send it back with notes and this and that, whatever.”

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Of the release date, he continues, “We haven't really discussed it too deeply other than we plan on it coming out this summer. It's not looking like we're going to be able to get out there this summer to support it. So does it make sense to put it out when you can't support it? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I think that's something that we're going to have to figure out sooner than later. But I think our mindset right now is just finishing it completely and making sure that it's great. And then taking it from there.”

Chino also revealed that there's been “a little talk” of Deftones potentially celebrating the 20th anniversary of their third record, White Pony, which is coming up on June 20.

“Well, actually it’s funny because we talked about this when the record came out that we wanted to remix the White Pony record,” he said. “Our initial idea was we’re going to get the masters of the White Pony record, and we’re going to put some money in a briefcase and the masters in a briefcase. And we’re going to go to DJ Shadow‘s house and we’re just going to hand it off to him and say like, ‘Here man, remix this record.’ And we wanted to call it the Black Stallion.”

The frontman adds that Deftones don't actually have anything leftover from the original White Pony sessions to unveil for the 20th anniversary (“I mean, we did have a couple B-sides, but those were released already”), so a remixed album with new artwork could be cool.

He also pondered the possibility of White Pony live shows: “I mean, maybe playing some shows would be great to see where that goes as far as maybe doing the record in its entirety or something like that at some point.”

Watch the full interview here.

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