Overview
Deftones is an American alternative-metal band formed in Sacramento in 1988 by vocalist Chino Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, and drummer Abe Cunningham — three childhood friends from C.K. McClatchy High School who connected through the city's skateboarding scene. With bassist Chi Cheng (joined 1990) and keyboardist/turntablist Frank Delgado (joined 1999), Deftones built one of the most critically acclaimed heavy-music catalogs of the past three decades. Their third album, White Pony (2000), is certified 2x platinum and its track "Elite" won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. The band has released nine studio albums on Maverick/Warner and remains active. [1][2]
Formation (1988–1994)
Carpenter, Moreno, and Cunningham were all at McClatchy High in Sacramento. Carpenter was a metal fan; Moreno came from hardcore punk (Bad Brains) and post-punk/new wave (Depeche Mode, The Cure). When Moreno learned Carpenter played guitar, he organized jam sessions in Carpenter's garage around 1988, with Cunningham on drums. [1][2]
The lineup went through early turbulence: Cunningham briefly left to join Phallucy (another Sacramento band — notably, Phallucy also played the Cattle Club circuit). Dominic Garcia switched from bass to drums, Chi Cheng joined on bass, and John Taylor took over drums in 1991. Cunningham returned in 1993, stabilizing the classic four-piece: Moreno, Carpenter, Cheng, Cunningham. [1]
Through this period the band toured aggressively outside Sacramento — sharing bills with Bad Brains, Korn, L7 and Quicksand in the Bay Area, Reno, and Los Angeles — because, as Moreno later put it, "there's like one good club [the Cattle Club] and a couple of other places, but people really don't go out here much." The grind of demo-to-demo gigging while juggling day jobs lasted four years before they signed to Madonna's Maverick Records in 1994. [9]
Early Sacramento shows
Deftones' earliest documented Sacramento performances were at the Guild Theater (January 19, 1990; December 27, 1990; February 22, 1991) and the Cattle Club (October 1990). Like Cake and Far, the band came up through the same small-cap Sacramento rooms that defined the early ʼ90s scene. [3][4]
The Around the Fur tour cycle produced two heavily mythologized hometown shows at the Cattle Club's late incarnation as Bojangles Club: May 2 and May 3, 1997, with Will Haven and Tinfed opening — pre-album, full of unreleased material and an Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills" cover, in a famously overheated room. The full second-night set survives on YouTube and is widely cited by fans as a definitive early Deftones live document. The band returned to Sacramento four months later for a September 11, 1997 show at The Press Club that included multiple live debuts and an Ice Cube "Wicked" breakdown. [9]
Adrenaline through White Pony (1995–2000)
The band signed to Maverick Records in 1994. Their debut, Adrenaline (1995), was a slow burner — eventually certified platinum, but not until 2008. Around the Fur (1997) was certified platinum and pushed the band into larger touring circuits. [1][5]
White Pony (2000) was the critical and commercial peak: it debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 with 178,000 first-week copies, pushed the band's sound from nu-metal aggression into shoegaze, ambient, and art-rock territory, and was certified 2x platinum by the RIAA (as of July 2025). "Elite" won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance, and "Change (In the House of Flies)" became a modern-rock standard. White Pony is widely cited as one of the defining albums of early-2000s heavy music — and is part of why critics regularly describe Deftones as "the Radiohead of metal" for refusing to repeat themselves album to album. [1][6]
Later albums (2003–2020)
- Deftones (self-titled, 2003)
- Saturday Night Wrist (2006)
- Diamond Eyes (2010) — the first album recorded after Chi Cheng's accident
- Koi No Yokan (2012)
- Gore (2016)
- Ohms (2020) — the most recent studio album
Each charted and sold well; the band maintained critical credibility while evolving their sound across all nine records. [1][5]
Chi Cheng's accident, Eros, and "Smile" (2008–2014)
On November 4, 2008, Chi Cheng was seriously injured in an automobile accident in Santa Clara, California. He was ejected from the vehicle — he was not wearing a seat belt — and suffered catastrophic injuries that left him in a semi-comatose state. By 2010, Cheng showed some signs of improvement (eye tracking, occasional verbal responses), but on April 13, 2013, he died of sudden cardiac arrest at a Stockton-area hospital. He was 42. [7][8]
Throughout 2008 the band had been recording an album called Eros with Cheng. After the accident the album was shelved indefinitely. On April 13, 2014, the one-year anniversary of Cheng's death, Deftones released "Smile" — one of the last songs they recorded with him, lifted from the Eros sessions — as a tribute single. [10]
Deftones played benefit shows in Hollywood (November 2008) with proceeds going to the Chi Ling Cheng Special Needs Trust. On June 14, 2011, the band returned to Sacramento for a benefit show at Ace of Spades with The Dillinger Escape Plan supporting, raising funds for Cheng's care at the International Brain Research Foundation. Cheng's family later founded Buckle Up For Chi, a seatbelt-awareness campaign. [7][11]
Sergio Vega, a friend of the band, served as touring and studio bassist from 2009 through 2021, recording four studio albums with Deftones. [1]
The Sacramento gap and the 2025 homecoming
The 2011 Ace of Spades benefit was Deftones' last public Sacramento performance for fourteen years. Through that span the band continued to tour internationally, headline festivals, and host their own annual Día de los Deftones all-ages festival at Petco Park in San Diego (2018-present, sold out at Petco for 2024 and 2025). But Sacramento itself stayed off the routing. [12]
That changed on March 1, 2025, when Deftones played Golden 1 Center for the first time ever — an arena-scale homecoming with The Mars Volta and Fleshwater opening, part of their 2025 North American Tour. [12]
Later that year they returned to Sacramento again for the Aftershock Festival on October 3, 2025 — their first Aftershock appearance since 2018. In December 2025 the band sponsored a hometown youth soccer team, framed publicly as a way to "give back to their childhood" — a small but pointed signal that the gap years hadn't been a break with the city, just a routing decision. [13][14]
Key people
- Chino Moreno — lead vocals, guitar. Sacramento native, McClatchy High. [1]
- Stephen Carpenter — lead guitar. McClatchy High, the original jam-session host. [1]
- Abe Cunningham — drums. McClatchy High. Brief departure to Phallucy, returned 1993. [1]
- Chi Cheng — bass (1990–2008). Died April 13, 2013, from injuries sustained in a 2008 car accident. [7]
- Frank Delgado — keyboards, turntables (1999–present). [1]
- Sergio Vega — bass (2009–2021). [1]
Why it matters for Sacramento music
Deftones and Cake are the two poles of Sacramento's national musical identity — one heavy, one idiosyncratic — and between them they proved that Sacramento could produce commercially successful, critically respected, decades-long careers without requiring artists to leave. Deftones' trajectory from McClatchy High garage jams to Guild Theater to Cattle Club to Grammy-winning platinum albums is the archetypal Sacramento band origin story. Chi Cheng's death in 2013 remains one of the Sacramento music community's most painful losses, and the Buckle Up For Chi campaign is an example of the scene converting grief into public good. The 2025 Golden 1 Center homecoming — after fourteen years away — was both a personal milestone and a marker for the city: Sacramento is now an arena-scale market for its own native artists, not just a tour stopover.
Sources
- Deftones, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deftones
- Deftones Biography, DeftonesWorld. https://www.deftonesworld.com/deftones-biography/
- Setlist.fm — Deftones at Guild Theater, Sacramento, December 27, 1990. https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/deftones/1990/guild-theater-sacramento-ca-43f7c7e7.html
- Sacramento Music Archive — Phallucy, 02/10/1990, Cattle Club. https://sacramentomusicarchive.com/1990/02/10/phallucy-02-10-1990-cattle-club-sacramento-ca-video-live-performance/
- Deftones discography, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deftones_discography
- White Pony, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Pony
- Chi Cheng (musician), Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Cheng_(musician)
- Chi Cheng, Deftones Bassist, Dead at 42, Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chi-cheng-deftones-bassist-dead-at-42-189056/
- Deftones: the story of the nu-metal band's early years, Louder Sound, April 12, 2025. https://www.loudersound.com/features/deftones-the-story-of-the-nu-metal-bands-early-years
- Deftones Unveil "Smile" In Memory Of Chi Cheng, Mallen Official, April 14, 2014.
- Deftones & The Dillinger Escape Plan play Sacramento this June 14 to benefit Chi Cheng, Submerge Magazine, May 2, 2011.
- Deftones to Embark on 2025 North American Tour, Golden 1 Center, September 16, 2024.
- Setlist.fm — Deftones at Aftershock Festival, October 3, 2025. https://www.setlist.fm
- Deftones supports their roots in sponsoring hometown youth soccer team, AR Current, December 25, 2025.