SERGIO VEGA On Perception That STEPHEN CARPENTER is Most 'Metal' Member Of DEFTONES: 'It's Not True'

Lorenzo Gandolfi of Chitarre.com recently conducted an interview with DEFTONES bassist Sergio Vega. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On DEFTONES guitarist Stephen Carpenter's recent comments in which he expressed being unhappy with the direction of the group's new album, "Gore":

Sergio: "Stephen started this band a long time ago, and Stephen used to be the only songwriter. And then Chino [Moreno, DEFTONES singer] started to play guitar and started to write songs. They don't write songs apart, but collaborating together. And then I joined the band and I was already a songwriter. So now you have three people. And then, you know, with Abe [Cunningham, drums] and Frank [Delgado, keyboards/samples], we jam together, but we have a lot of people that are developing this material. And it comes together in different ways and different speeds. So sometimes, you know, it could be hard for somebody. Like, if you're going through things in your life, and other people are not, or this or this. Sometimes it works out for everybody, sometimes somebody has a hard time or a hard day. And, because of our friendship, we all are still there and present. So what's important is that during the time that Stephen was having problems catching up with the material, or being into it, or thinking about it, he was always very supportive. So even if there was something that he didn't like right away, he was, like, 'I'm not gonna mess with this and let it develop and see where it goes. Because I trust you guys.' We all are playing together, so it was always that. That's the part that gets missed — so, yeah, he felt uncomfortable, but he never stopped anything; he was always supportive. And then when he found his place, for certain songs, like 'Hearts/Wires', he made the song so much better, because he allowed it to live and he waited and he sat there, and then, finally, he was was, like, 'Oh, all right. I see what I can bring to this song to make it better.'"

On the pereception that Stephen is the "heaviest" and most "metal" member of DEFTONES:

Sergio: "It's not true. I think that we all have the way that we look, and we have the things that we talk about, but the truth is that we all have a very wide palette — and Abe and Frank as well. We all have things that we like that everybody likes. But then everybody has something that the other people don't like. So Stephen is interesting, because he obviously has long hair and he looks like the most metal, and he always is championing younger, newer metal bands that he really likes, like bands like PERIPHERY. You know, those are people that he brought to us. But at the same time, he listens to everything; he listens to rap, he likes Katy Perry… He likes everything, like we all do. We all have things. But it becomes easy to [overgeneralize it by saying], 'Oh, Chino likes new wave and Stephen likes metal.' But that's not really what's happening."

Moreno recently described Carpenter as the "odd man out" while DEFTONES recorded its eighth studio album, although he added that it "wasn't our intention to exclude him."

Carpenter admitted previously that he initially didn't want to work on the record, saying: "All the songs were all a challenge for me to get into. I would never leave the band, but the band starting to leave me, I can't control that."

"Gore" debuted at No. 2 on The Billboard 200, having shifted 71,000 equivalent album units in the week ending April 14. It is the band's highest-charting effort since their self-titled fourth album bowed and peaked at No. 2 in 2003.