System Of A Down and Deftones have announced a special one-off show for August 17 at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA. The show features The Mars Volta, Viagra Boys, and VOWWS and is being billed as a "once-in-a-lifetime event." No further details are available about possible setlists, but tickets go on sale this Friday, April 12. Email list signups for available here.
While it seems unlikely that the event could herald new material from System Of A Down given the band's stance in recent years, the possibility of new Deftones is very likely. Deftones was working on a new album throughout 2023, which they're aiming to release sometime this year.
Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter said in an interview last year: "In the last couple months, really two or three months, we… well maybe a little longer now, really. February is when we started. We starting to work on new material for a new record.
He continued: "It's going good. It's a little slow at first, but it always is. Dragging our feet ain't nothing new. But we've got the stuff up and going now, and yeah. We're on a good little momentum at the moment and we hope to have it all done and out by next spring or summer. I mean, there's no official date yet but that's our goal."
Carpenter later revealed that Deftones is once again working with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Mastodon, Alice In Chains, etc.), who they'd previously worked with on both Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan.
"Everything stems from us just jamming out some ideas, messing around. Someone comes up with something that maybe someone else or everyone else likes, and then we focus in on that for a little bit," said Carpenter of Raskulinecz.
"That's what Nick's great at doing, too. He's good at… well we could just sit and jam aimlessly and plow through idea after idea without even stopping to recognize 'em. He's great at saying 'that idea is really cool. Let's try that. Let's try to work on that for a minute, and then that other idea might be really cool with that one. Let's try putting them together' and stuff like that. So that's what's awesome about him. He's like a an unofficial band member at that point. He's good at giving us direction where we don't normally do that well on our own."
The new Deftones album will be their first without bassist Sergio Vega, who played on the band's previous four albums and quit in 2021. Fred Sablan has been filling in with Deftones live, but the band has never announced an official replacement for Vega.
