“This one,” says Chino Moreno — he grins — “is for you.”
“My Own Summer (Shove It)” hits and Birmingham absolutely loses its mind. That could happen anywhere. Any night. But tonight, it happens here.
For a moment, the BP Pulse Live feels like it might actually lift off its foundations. This is the song — the one that dragged Deftones out of the underground and into the wider consciousness. And yet it doesn’t feel like a band clinging to the past. Instead, it feels like a reminder of where everything started, before the story spirals outward again.
The set is neatly bookended. It opens with “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” — still achingly beautiful, still devastating — and closes with “7 Words” from 1995’s “Adrenaline”. Three decades contained within a single arc. But this is no nostalgia exercise. Far from it.
Large chunks of the night are drawn from the most recent material, taken from “private music” — deliberately styled that way — their first album in five years, almost as if to underline a point. Songs like “locked club”, “ecdysis”, “my mind is a mountain” and “infinite source” don’t feel like obligations — they feel essential. A band proving, without saying it out loud, that they still have plenty to say.
Early on, “Rocket Skates” detonates with brute force, “Diamond Eyes” lands with absolute authority, and “Digital Bath” drifts through the room like a fever dream. The crowd doesn’t need warming up, and the reaction is instinctive rather than performative.
And then there are the visuals — impossible to ignore, impossible to escape. Vast screens tower over the stage, flooding the room with abstract, shifting imagery that pulses, fractures and dissolves in time with the music. It’s not background decoration; it’s another instrument entirely. At times hypnotic, at others outright disorientating, the visuals turn the gig into a full sensory assault, amplifying the band’s ability to bend atmosphere to their will. Deftones aren’t just playing to the room — they’re reshaping it.
Frank Delgado’s synth work haunts the edges of songs like “Swerve City”, adding an almost spectral quality, while “Rosemary” stretches and breathes, Chino subtly altering the mood without ever forcing it. When he speaks, it’s casual. When he sings, it’s commanding. He doesn’t demand attention — he already owns it.
One of the most striking things in the room is the crowd itself. There are plenty of people my age — those who’ve grown up with this band — but there’s also a strong presence of younger fans. Deftones, like any arena rock band, now travel effortlessly across generations, without ever sanding down the edges that made them special in the first place.
“Heavy” barely covers it. “Hole in the Earth” crushes from its opening seconds. “Sextape” carries a hint of alt-rock grandeur — fleeting shades of The Smashing Pumpkins perhaps — but never loses its identity. Stephen Carpenter’s guitar work remains unmistakable: detuned, jagged, and hypnotic. “Genesis” is a perfect example — coiled, menacing, and immense.
There’s a brief pause when someone goes down in the pit, the momentum momentarily checked, before the band regroup and slam straight back in with “milk of the madonna”, complete with a “souvenir” outro. It feels deliberate. Defiant, even. From here, the ending is inevitable.
The encore opens with the brooding swell of “Cherry Waves”, which brings us back to where we started, before the night is brought to a close in the most uncompromising way possible.
Earlier in the evening, the singer in support band Drug Church said the greatest thing about playing to a Deftones crowd is the mix of people it brings together — fans from every corner of alternative music, all in the same room. Looking around tonight, it’s hard to argue.
And maybe because Deftones are a metal band.
But they’re a metal band like no other.
Thirty-plus years in, still filling arenas, still evolving, still unmistakably themselves — if you can put 15,000 people in a room after all this time, you’re doing something right.
Arena rock — rewritten, redefined, and done entirely on their own terms.
