When Guitar World catches up with Stephen Carpenter, the Deftones guitarist is gearing up for a busy few months.
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The following day, he and theWhen Guitar World catches up with Stephen Carpenter, the Deftones guitarist is gearing up for a busy few months.
The following day, he and the band leave for a few weeks of headline shows across Europe, after which they’ll be back on these shores for a much-anticipated summer package jaunt with Rise Against and Thrice. Those shows in particular are ones that Carpenter is excited for.
“It’s gonna be great, you know?” he says. “We’ve played lots of shows with Rise throughout the years but it’s the first time we’ve actually toured together, so that’ll be fun. And Thrice, my best friend loves those guys. So it’s a nice mix.
As for what people can expect from the Deftones at the shows, he continues, “We don’t ever really have anything particular in mind when it comes to our set lists. The only thing we do really think about and work on is practicing through our old catalog and getting everything back into shape, because there’s a lot of stuff we haven’t played in a long time. So we’ll do some of that along with the new stuff.”
The new stuff, of course, is Deftones’ eighth and most recent album, Gore, which was released last year and has continued the band’s reign as one of metal’s most enticing and enigmatic acts, with Carpenter’s crushing riffs juxtaposed against elements of new wave, post-punk, space-rock and atmospheric sounds.
It’s a stylistic combination that has been there since the Sacramento, California–based band’s beginnings, but that truly came to the fore on their second album, 1997’s Around the Fur. That effort also signaled their mainstream breakthrough, spawning hits in the piledriving opening track, “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and the swirling, shoegaze-tinged “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away).”
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