Deftones was supposed to release their new album this summer alongside their tour with Poppy and Gojira. The tour was cancelled due to COVID-19 and vocalist Chino Moreno said releasing the album without touring might not make sense. Now in an interview with Download TV, drummer Abe Cunningham revealed the new album is coming "hopefully, maybe September. I heard something. I can’t remember."
"We actually tracked everything over the summer, last summer—June and July—we were in the studio tracking. And we’re just taking our time. But we actually just completed everything. Were mixing…. We were down in L.A. recording, but we mixed up in Seattle.
"We’re working with our old pal Terry Date, who did a bunch of our earlier records and stuff too. He’s up there with this while distancing thing, it was a bit rough, but we figured out a way to kind of do the mixes without being there.
"It’s a lot better when we’re all in the room; we can knock it out quick and argue and do our things. But, yeah, we just completed that. It’s getting mastered right now, and that’s been the main thing. So it’s been something to do in this strange off time."
Cunningham later talked about Deftones' unreleased 2008 album Eros. Cunningham said the album was never finished, though the band is considering maybe releasing some of the finished material as an EP.
"We’ve talked about putting out maybe a condensed version or an EP of four or five songs, something like that, and that kind of makes sense. But we have to get into all the legalities of it and all that stuff and also we have to finish it. But yeah, it would be nice for that to see the light of day, definitely."
The only thing we've ever heard from Eros was "Smile." Cunningham added the album was "not that good" but has some really good songs.
"…It was never completed, and that’s what people don’t get like ‘what, you’re just sitting on it?’ and I mean no, we’re not just sitting on it, we never finished it. And then he [Chi Cheng] got in his accident and that’s kinda where it just stopped. And quite frankly it’s not that good. There’s some songs that are really good. But I gotta be honest, it was like you know, we were just trying to get back to it and see what we can come up with then… and it’s not that it’s not good, it’s just… there’s a lot attached to it as well, you know? And I understand that people are passionate about that and they want to hear Chi‘s last musical contribution."
