DEFTONES Frontman: 'I Feel Obligated To At Least Play Stuff From All The Records'

Metal Insider conducted an interview with Chino Moreno, vocalist and lyrical mastermind of DEFTONES, on April 16, 2011 at the third show of the Sacramento band's current U.S. tour in support of its sixth studio effort, "Diamond Eyes". A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Insider: I heard a rumor that for last night's show that you guys might be playing "Around The Fur" and "Diamond Eyes" in their entirety. Did that actually end up happening?

Chino: It didn't happen. It was exactly what you said, a rumor. In fact, I think someone from our management office had posted it somewhere, whether it be Facebook or Twitter or something like that. When we read about it and were like, "What!?" So, yeah, I mean, we thought about doing it and then yesterday when we got here we were like, "Let's just play." We feel like it kind of would have been — I mean, to ignore some of our other records, although it would be fun to play those in their entirety, y'know, may be a special thing, but I feel like there would be a lot of people that would be bummed because we left so much of our other records, especially our new record since we're out promoting it, but to leave out songs from "White Pony" and "Adrenaline", y'know, if we were going to play those songs I could see a lot people being more upset than the people that would be happy with just those two. So, at the end of the day we just figured we'd play a heavy set with "Around The Fur" and heavy on the new record, but y'know, we'll mix it up.

Metal Insider: Is there a plan for that in the future?

Chino: I don't know. We've been asked to do it before, so we've done it. It's one of those things, if someone really wants us to do it we will do it if it's like a special thing but it's almost like we'd be going up there handcuffed since we could only play those two records. It wouldn't make for a dynamic or fun show. It would still be good, I shouldn't say that because we could make it great I'm sure but, I don't know. We really aren't making plans for it.

Metal Insider: With that, do you feel obligated to play songs off your older records for your older fans?

Chino: No, I feel obligated to at least play stuff from all the records. Not just the older records but all of them – even though lately we haven't been playing much of the last record, "Saturday Night Wrist". Some nights we don't play any of it but tonight we're going to bring some of that stuff back. I think the best thing is to always do with the set list — because a lot of people whether it be their age or when they got into us, I mean, a lot of people, they hear that one record, whatever record that might be that got them into us, y'know? Who knows what record it could be? Y'know, a lot of people are different. A lot of kids that come have like the self-titled record and say, ‘This is my favorite record' and I'd be like, okay, well, we weren't going to play anything from this tonight so we'll add a couple songs on the setlist just try to balance it out really.

Metal Insider: You guys have worked with a number of producers like Terry Date, Nick Raskulinecz, and others. Who has been your favorite to work with thus far or can you even name a favorite?

Chino: I love Terry, but it was also cool to work with Nick because I got a whole different perspective of a different type of producer. [Nick] is a whole different type of producer from Terry and that was an experience, too, but I love Terry as a person. I mean, he's a great dude, and I hung out with a couple of days ago. He's kind of an older guy and he's really wise. I don't know, he's just one of my favorite people in the world so I just like to spend time with him and not only is he great at what he does but he's got so much rad history and he's worked with so many great artists but more than anything you can learn a lot from just talking to him and working with him. Yeah, he's great.

Read the entire interview from Metal Insider.