USA: Despite almost breaking up and grief from their record label, Deftones manage to pull through with new album "Saturday Night Wrist"

Record ID: 825936

  • Title: USA: Despite almost breaking up and grief from their record label, Deftones manage to pull through with new album "Saturday Night Wrist"
  • Date: 23rd November 2006
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ABE CUNNINGHAM, "DEFTONES" DRUMMER, SAYING: "It was a little crazy, it was just life, I don't think these are, a lot of things are going on between all of us in our personal lives, it's nothing different that happens to anyone who's living life. It kind of all just compounded all at once, and
  • Embargoed: 8th December 2006 12:00
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  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA9NGAP0GUW0W15IQFKP8VN4DU6
  • Story Text: Nearly ten years after their debut on Madonna's Maverick records, the hard-rock angst-ridden group Deftones have released their fifth studio album, "Saturday Night Wrist." With their last two albums peaking at No. 3 and No. 2 on the Billboard chart respectively, Grammy-winning California rockers Deftones seemed poised to break out from cult favourites to mainstream blockbuster act. Instead, their next effort after "White Pony" and "Deftones" almost broke up the band.
    "It was a little crazy, it was just life, I don't think these are, a lot of things are going on between all of us in our personal lives, it's nothing different that happens to anyone who's living life. It kind of all just compounded all at once, and it took three years, but it is what it is, there's no recipe, but the outcome is good" says "Deftones" drummer Abe Cunningham, reflecting on the sometimes tumultuous record-making process.
    It took them three years to record "Saturday Night Wrist," which was released on October 31 via Maverick Records, almost a month after the successful "Family Values" tour wrapped, and just after the start of their current tour's beginning. For a time, the entire band was pessimistic about the completion of the album, which had fallen on the back-burner when lead singer Chino Moreno developed writer's block a year and a half into production and abandoned recording altogether to tour with a friend's obscure band.
    "It's always healthy for you to step out of your situation for a little while, because it seemed like we were just kind of making a record just for the sake of making a record, at least for me, from my part of it. So I think stepping away from it and re-approaching it was the most healthy thing for me, I was able to see everything in a whole different way and from that point on it seemed like everything started to fall into place," says "Deftones" lead singer Chino Moreno.
    A heart-felt talk between band members arranged by management in a Los Angeles hotel room cleared the air and convinced them they still wanted to play music together, and the end result was "Saturday Night Wrist," an intense blend of pummelling hard rock, melancholic dirge and even electronica. Much of the anger and resentment among bandmates seeped into the recording process, making songs like "Hole in the Earth," the first single from the record, especially gritty -- proof being lyrics that read "I hate all of my friends, they all lack taste sometimes." But Cunningham and Moreno insist that hard times with an otherwise harmonious group of friends were bound to happen eventually, especially with influences of management and the glare of the public spotlight:
    "It's very easy to do, I think we always try to keep that in mind, of how we started out -- it was just in the garage, and trying to figure it out, and then it's been 18 years now, so all these things come along the way," says Abe Cunningham
    "We were boys, not even young men, boys," adds Chino Moreno, "I think when we started making this together as friends, and it would be weird if we didn't have any kind of emotional conflicts that we do have, it's like we're brothers. It's a good thing, it's healthy, and I think it comes through the music. We're all different people at the same time, with very different ideas of how things should sound sometimes and the way things should be and getting the good balance of what everybody does is the goal for us in making a record."
    The California-based band also faced issues at times with Madonna's Maverick label, a subsidiary of Warner Music, despite no complaints from them on the previous records' content. They even had a falling out with star producer Bob Ezrin of Pink Floyd and Aerosmith fame, prompting them to finish the record themselves.
    "In their mind, what they think is a hit song, what they think is a radio song, you know, we had them on our backs a lot for this record. Song by song they were listening to them and saying, 'okay, we need this, we need this,' which kind of added a lot of pressure I think on us that we didn't really need. It's not a good thing, you know what I mean, but whatever, it kind of sucks," says Chino Moreno.
    Despite the strife, the Deftones have been playing to many sold-out houses lately, and will continue touring in support of "Saturday Night Wrist" until mid-December. Since its release, the album has sold over 76,000 copies and climbed to number 10 on the Billboard top 200 album chart as of November 18.
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