Song Exploder - Deftones - Ohms

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Deftones are a Grammy-winning band from Sacramento who’ve sold over ten million albums. Their ninth album, Ohms, came out this year, on September 25th, 2020. In this episode, singer Chino Moreno breaks down how the title track came together, and how they literally went back to where things started in order to create it. songexploder.net/deftones

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Deaf Tones are a Grammy-winning band from Sacramento, who've sold over 10 million albums. Their ninth album came out this year on September 25, 2020. It's called Oms, and the last track on it is also called Oms. In this episode, singer Chino Moreno breaks down how that song came together, and how they literally went back to where things. started in order to create the music. Here's Chino Moreno on how Olms got started.

My name is Chino Moreno. The first time I heard anything of it was an email that I received from Stefan Carpenter who plays guitar. He sent this demo and I remember I was traveling and I was on my way to Yellowstone National Park. And I remember like my wife was getting mad at me because I don't have unlimited data. So like I was downloading stuff like using my cellular network and she was like, why are you downloading stuff right now? We're going to run out of data. But I'd already got like two-thirds of the way through, so I just continued on.

This was probably three or so years ago, out of the blue. He rarely sends me demos, because a lot of our music is really written, like all of us in the same room. But I know when he sends me something that he feels strongly enough about it to send it to me. So when he does do that, I'm already excited right off the bat.

Just the guitar riff ideas were there. There's like this longing, desperate sort of undertone. in there, this sort of desperate feeling. I think it's like close to seven minutes long I don't remember, but it's pretty lengthy and like a lot of the parts were super extended. So my first initial idea was to chop it down and kind of just, you know, make it more concise. So I was in the passenger seat and I just started chopping it up on the road while we were

like driving through Idaho or something like that. So I just kind of trimmed it down a little bit and then I sent it back to him and the rest guys in the band. And it wasn't until a couple years later until we actually started our first writing sessions. I pulled it out and said, hey, you guys remember this thing. When we went in to go do the initial writing for this record, we decided to go back to our studio that we have in Sacramento, California, which we've had since the mid-90s. And we call it the spot. It was kind of like a clubhouse. Like literally, when we first started hanging out there, we built like a half-pipe in there. and we just used it at the place to skate.

And we used to play this board game called Risk. We would have these hour-long games and just sit back and drink and smoke. And that was just as big as part of us as making music. So over the years, we'd slowly sort of morphed into like an actual recording studio. But we hadn't been to that studio for 10 years. Ever since 2008, I believe, that was when our bass player, Chi, he was in a car accident. and we took a break from that point on, like we actually just took a break from the band

for a good six months, I would say. The car accident left Chi in a coma. He passed away in April 2013. I think one of the main reasons why we hadn't been back there for so long was because it was sort of a difficult thing to be back there in the same place. And, you know, it was crazy because, like, you look into the corner where Chi

all the stuff was set up like all the same with like all his stuff like there. It was almost like a time capsule in a way. It was kind of a trip. So there are some sort of like uneasy feelings, but at the same time, there's some great memories that we have there. So we cleaned it all out. We like, you know, got some new gear, new carpet, new everything. And then all of a sudden it was almost like, okay, it's the same place, but it has like this new sort of revitalized kind of feel to it. And, you know,

obviously left a couple of cheese things in there to just save his place in there. But it definitely was a good feeling to be back there and to be, you know, with the same thing. same guys that wrote multiple records in that place and to be there at all of us in our mid to late 40s and we've been going there since we were kids man so it was pretty crazy but it's definitely like a cool feeling to have that nostalgia that we created and to sort of resurrect that too with this record this recording is probably one of the first things that we started jamming on and at that point we started working on it from scratch with everybody sort of learning the parts and joining in you know in their own way. The recording is kind of funny because we're sitting there

learning it and it's pretty terrible and I was sort of reluctant to send it but I think it's awesome because it just shows it like how these things happen really with us five in the same room at the same time that energy is pretty important. It's really about us just trying not to come in with preconceived ideas and really just like building off the reaction that we all have to one another in the room at that point in time. The very first time that I approached it vocally was when we were in the room together. And it's really bad. Like, the words aren't really there.

You can tell you tell, but, you know, the same cadence and the same melodies that ended up being on the record are, like, heavily hinted in there. The way we work is very much off just like, one person makes a sound, and then the next person reacts to that sound. I knew already off the bat that it was way too long, and I knew that we were going to cut it down more. And since I'm going to be the one that has to kind of, like, sing over it and think, figure out where and how my vocals are going to fit into it, I feel like I have a strong idea of where it needs to go. At that point, the style of the guitar playing itself was kind of less riffy and kind of had more like a more of the halftime feel. But I was like, this song needs to start off more spastic. It needs to be more spastic when it comes out.

I always felt like the end of the song was kind of the most exciting part of the song, that riff that it kind of goes out on. And I was like, what if it just starts out with that part? So now the song starts with the ending of the song. It's kind of like book in by that rolling guitar riff. So it starts off a little bit more frantic, and then all of a sudden it drops into that more mellow thing. But then when Abe comes in with the drums on the downbeat, it sinks into place and like cementes the song into this sort of feeling.

So we had Terry come out. Terry Day is an awesome producer from Seattle, Washington, that did some of our biggest records. So when we wanted to make this new record, we were like, one main thing was like, we need to feel comfortable. And, you know, having Terry there, we already know, allows us to just be us. Terry's first thing that he said was like,

hey, if we do this, we're going to do it live, you know. Like, I don't want you guys to play restraint. I want you guys just to play off each other. And that's what we did. We decided that we were not going to record to a click. A click is a metronome track that plays while you're recording to make sure the tempo of the song stays consistent. consistent. Our last two records, we started using a tempo map. Not that it's a bad thing, but

Abe is singing there playing his drums, listening to a click in his headphones. And I saw so many times him not having fun doing that, like literally just like, I can tell he was just unhappy doing that. And when we got rid of the click track, then we all went in there and tracked stuff together. And basically Abe is the clock now. Everything just falls right into place, like so much better. Abe had a couple different beat ideas in the pre-chorus, but I was like, this one is perfect.

This kind of half-time, stuttered beat reminded me of like Jane's Addiction style and sort of very washed out kind of, you know, maybe shoegazy even. It feels like you're falling. That's Sergio Vega bass. He's kind of a big melodic part in the verses. I mean, he's sort of like

dancing and he goes up on the neck a lot, you know, He has a little bit of grit still in his bass tone. You know, when he does those melodies, he's still holding down the low end, but there's that melody that's weaving in and out of it. With this record, we wanted Frank Delgado, who plays synthesizer, to be more prominent, and he'd purchased this profit, and he basically uses that synth through pretty much the whole record.

You know, those sounds in what are so warm, and they're kind of old school. You know, it's like more vintage sounding and less, you know, like, processed. I think is always the challenge to marry that organic guitar stuff with the, you know, synth stuff. But I feel like we've been trying to sneak them into the tunes for quite some time. And with this song, and particularly, though, he's sort of toying with the same sort of melody that Sergio's in the... They're both in there sort of weaving up and down with those notes. And it sounds rad. I mean, I love that.

There's this little sheer sound of the intro of the song where it sounds like maybe like a fighter planers going by or something like that. We were just like tweaking pedals through his synthesizer. We grabbed a little snippet of it and then we put that at the beginning tube. And then it went right into that guitar riff. And it just like launched you into the song. The debris of the past. I love to hear the grit on my voice, which is, you know, maybe years of abuse or whatever that's there.

It kind of sounds aged, I guess, in a way. Add it's to cause a change in the tides. I always have overdrive to sort of even give it a little bit more coarse feel to it. But then, so I take that and then I'll coat that usually with a little bit of slapback delay, a little bit of the washiness of it to kind of smooth it out. And when I get that right balance, to me, it's really, really comfortable. to sing. You know, in the beginning at the time, I still didn't really know what the song was about,

but I knew there was this sense of desperation. The very first line of the song says we're surrounded by debris of the past, and the next line is, and it's too late to cause the change in the tides. And that's phrases that just came to me. Like, I wasn't trying to write about the environment per se or the state of the planet. But that was the first thing that popped in my head. It's like, yeah, this is like a mission statement. know, like where we are today with the planet.

Music has always sort of been an escape from, like, reality for me. So I've never sort of taken any, like, a political, environmental stance. With any of our music, I don't feel the passion to use this thing that happens between five people as, like, my soapbox. You know what I'm saying? So I feel like I've kind of copped out of, like, actually, like, you know, speaking my voice. But at the same time, if I am going to do it, I think I want to do it in a more artistic. way, you know. I don't abandon the theme, but I kind of make it more open-ended. So just not allowing it to just be like this linear idea with the next line and the next line sort of, it could be, okay, maybe he's talking about a relationship. I always think of the chorus should go somewhere, whether it dives down or it's uplifting. Lyrically, I feel like the song already has this sort of like doomsday.

kind of acceptance of like, you know, everything is sort of caving in on itself, and then the chorus lyrics are uplifting. Time won't change this promise we made basically just saying, like, yo, we're locked arms, like, together while, like, the meteor's coming at us. And no matter what, even beyond this planet, we will remain, like, our bond and, like, this promise to just, like, have each other's back. How can we decided to make this the last song on the album? I felt like this song was kind of a closing statement in a way. It kind of leaves you with this optimistic feeling. That dichotomy, I think, of the song, having this, like, desolate vibe, and then morphing into that, uplifting thing.

And that's kind of a challenge. So to end the record on that vibe, I felt good about it. Now we're just looking towards the future. And now here's Oms by Deftones in its entirety. visit songexploder.net slash deftones. You'll find links to buy or stream Oms, and you can watch the music video for it. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career, and then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website. Rishikesh.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploter.combe.

Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me, Rishi-Kesh Hereway, with producer Christian Coons and production assistant Olivia Wood. Illustrator Carlos Lerma makes original artwork for every episode, and Kathleen Smith handles music clearance. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective independent podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can get a SongExploder t-shirt at SongExploder.net slash shirt. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Your Way. Thanks for listening.