Review Summary: The best Deftones has been in over a decade
Even as a casual listener, I can tell that Deftones fans have been eating good in 2025. The band remains as relevant as ever in the three decades since debuting with 1995’s Adrenaline, their hits maintaining a viral presence and influencing new generations with their signature blend of alt-metal and shoegaze (I guess the kids call it baddiecore?). It also helps that Private Music, their tenth album and first since 2020’s Ohms, happens to be pretty damn good.
It certainly makes for a snappy listen with the songs in the first half offering some especially in-your-face approaches. The opening one-two of “my mind is a mountain” and “locked club” put heavy steps forward with hazy vocals, busy drums, and guitar chugs that sweep over the listener, but things really get going courtesy of the driving basslines on “ecdysis” and “infinite source.” Elsewhere, “milk of the Madonna” features the most explosive chorus while the grooves on “cut hands” and “~metal dream” seemingly hearken back to almost hip hop sensibilities.
I can also appreciate the moments that give the listener some space to breathe. “Souvenir” and the closing “departing the body” hit the sort of brooding almost into doom territory with melodramatic vocals and atmospheric layers amidst the descending plods. “I think about you all the time” proves to be the most pleasant outlier with touches of clean guitar and dreamy vocals.
Overall, private music is a powerful album that just might be the best Deftones has offered since 2012’s Koi No Yokan. Parallels could be made to 2010’s Diamond Eyes in its similar layout of eleven songs in forty-two minutes, making it easy to feel out with a tight pace. It doesn’t offer anything too drastically new but rather a demonstration of what the band does so well. And as a more cursory listener, it does especially well in encouraging deeper dives.
