Deftones' Moreno recalls frosty Saturday Night Wrist sessions

Chino Moreno has recalled how Deftones’ “dark days” defined their fifth studio album, 2006’s Saturday Night Wrist.

The album launched 10 years ago today – during a time steeped in excess, relationship issues and drug use which almost drove the band apart.

The singer says he and guitarist Stef Carpenter were too “bullheaded” to work together, and that the members of the band avoided each other by recording their parts separately in the studio – resulting in a half-baked, “fragmented” work.

Moreno tells Metal Hammer: “Communications stopped. Instead of us arguing about things we just gave up, like trying to fight or even to try and communicate. And that was what really made that suck, because instead of working things out and arguing things out, and settling on what was best, both of us kinda stopped wanting to even argue.

“It was one of those things where it was like ‘if you don’t care then I don’t care’. ‘If you’re not going to talk then I’m not going to talk.’ And us both being bullheaded and then nothing gets done, No one’s taking the driver’s seat.

“We never really fought. It was more just like a power struggle.”

He continues: “The album was fragmented in a really bad way. No one took the driver’s seat there, so it was like no direction and at the very end there was all these pieces that you kind of had to stack them together and try to make an album out of it, and that’s how it sounds to me when I listen back to it.”

Deftones recently revealed they’ll return to Paris for the first time since the Bataclan terror attacks last November, which claimed the lives of 130 people as part of a wider, coordinated attack on the city. They’ll perform at Paris’s Olympia on May 2.

Deftones Gore European tour 2017

Apr 18: Vienna Gasometer, Austria
Apr 19: Munich Zenith, Germany
Apr 20: Zurich Halle 622, Switzerland
Apr 21: Milan Fabrique, Italy
Apr 23: Offenbach Stadhalle, Germany
Apr 24: Tilburg 013, Netherlands
Apr 25: Luxembourg Rockhal, Luxembourg
Apr 27: Berlin Velodrom, Germany
Apr 28: Hamburg Sporthalle, Germany
Apr 29: Meerhout Groezrock, Belgium
May 01: Cologne Palladium, Germany
May 02: Paris Olympia, France
May 05: London Alexandra Palace, UK
May 06: Manchester O2 Apollo, UK
May 07: Glasgow SECC, UK

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Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.