There’s been something of a delicious irony to the pre-release campaign behind Deftones’ private music. Last June, the alt-metal titans first teased the release of their long-awaited 10th studio album — their first since 2020’s Ohms — by revealing its title on a banner graphic to a crowd of several thousand at London, UK’s Crystal Palace Park. The record is undoubtedly one of the 2025’s biggest and most eagerly anticipated heavy-music releases, and it arrives the same damn day Deftones launch their next massive arena tour. In other words, it’s a very public offering.
On another level, the title perhaps hints at a universal truth, one that exists even outside of Deftones’ sprawling, seismic and legendary discography — no matter where you encounter it, whether standing side by side in a field of thousands or while resting at home alone with a set of headphones on, music has a unique way of burrowing itself deep into your soul. And if they hadn’t already, Deftones are looking to connect with your core, long term, with their private music.
The album demands attention from the jump, with Abe Cunningham’s frenetic drum fills driving the deep-and-groovy push of “my mind is a mountain.” Stephen Carpenter’s saturated eight-stringing is lush and heavy, Chino Moreno pulls off a familiarly heart-woozy set of coos and cries while hinting at themes of stagnation and the desire for change (“The storm remains/And my heart’s entrenched/New fate explores me now”). Sonically, it’s neither a grand reinvention nor a “back-to-basics” reboot, but rather a confidently cool, yet still distortion-crushed cementing of their signature sound. Or, it’s giving peak Deftones.
Next up, the dark and chewy “locked club” needles into a mix of savage, staccato guitars and Dimetapp-hazy heavy-dreampop melodies. Moreno talks of divine communion, the song’s narrator “staring up at god from the water… rising, getting closer to the truth.” There’s an ambiguous slant to the lyrics as the singer insists, “Join our parade or be left out,” inviting and eerie in equal measures. But for Deftones’ faithful fanbase, a transcendent connection may well be made once faced with the monumental production of private music, returned Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan producer Nick Raskulinecz elevating the crystal mix with god-tier guitar tones and, in the case of “locked club,” Moreno’s angelic falsetto vocalizations.
Deftones keep up the watery allusions on “ecdysis,” a chunkily chromatic slam where Moreno screams of being swallowed by rising rivers. He sings out a wish to be held tight across multiple songs. The connective tissue draws back even further on “souvenir,” seemingly an interstellar sister song of sorts to Diamond Eyes fan favorite “Sextape.” Instead of colliding with waves, he’s metaphorically — perhaps hornily — “hovering in space, embracing the lights, discovering something else.” Like that earlier track, though, Deftones’ frontman brings it all together with a breathily enthusiastic refrain of “We ride.”
The journey Deftones take listeners on with private music also includes meaty-riffed and synth-riddled aggression (“cut hands”), natural harmonic-popping post-hardcore romanticism (“infinite source”) and briefly jazz-skronked alt-anthems (“metal dream”). Despite the minor aesthetic shake-ups, the album ultimately plays out as a rock-solid restatement of intent from a singular juggernaut nearing its 40th anniversary. It rides how you expect it to, but that’s a net positive.
Some of these songs will no doubt be blasted to the rafters once the band kick into this next run of tour dates. Even more magically, they’ll probably also push themselves out of the physical plane and deep into their fans’ very essence — taking Deftones music out of the public sphere and into somewhere more profoundly private.