DEFTONES Overcoming The 'Nu-Metal' Label

July 24, 2007

TheStar.com recently conducted an interview with DEFTONES guitarist Stephen Carpenter. A couple of excerpts follow:

On musical labels and categories:

"I don't know if it's us not getting our due, but we definitely get lumped into categories all the time that we would never consider ourselves to be part of. I think we just get dismissed because we're not commercially viable. That doesn't make sense to a lot of people. If it's not on the radio, it's not something they can see. (Singer) Chino (Moreno's) vocals aren't very decipherable as it is, so that throws people off big time. Especially with radio, what people want is songs you can sing along to all the time and you don't have to think about. And with us, I think, you've gotta focus on it too much."

On the ill-fated sessions for "Saturday Night Wrist" with producer Bob Ezrin:

"We've definitely talked about all the ups and downs we experienced making the record, but Bob's a great guy.

"His work habits and the method of operation that he goes by are not the same as ours. Individually, I absolutely agree and totally dig on Bob and how he works. But as a group, we've got people who just don't focus on their shit like they should or pass the buck, if you will. . . We had a couple of drug addicts in the band during this process, man. It was hell. Everything's better now. But it's, like, who knows if it's gonna rear its ugly head again?"

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