Weenie Roast 2010 Artist Spotlight: Deftones

The Deftones will blow your mind away at Weenie Roast. I promise this much to you.

The band recently released their album Diamond Eyes, with their title track receiving some air time and climbing its way to #24 on KROQ’s Most Played list. The band’s bass player, Chi Cheng, was seriously injured in a car accident in 2008 and has yet to recover. They played a pair of fund-raising shows in LA in November which brought out tons of musicians like Tommy Lee, Cypress Hill, Mike Shinoda, Mark McGrath and others. The band had Sergio Vega of Quicksand fill in on the bass.

Deftones have been killing it since they first started playing in guitarist Stephan Carpenter’s garage in high school.

Find out more about the Deftones after the jump!

Carpenter, singer Chino Moreno and drummer Abe Cunningham all attended the same high school in Sacramento. The three began jamming in Carpenter’s garage around 1988, and eventually found Cheng to play bass. They recorded their first demo and were playing shows around Sacramento. In the next two years, they would eventually play all the way down to Los Angeles, alongside bands like Korn. They struck the ear of a Maverick Records representative and were soon signed to the label.

In 1995 they released their debut album, Adrenaline, which had a rocky start but ended up building a large fanbase. The album sold over 200,000 copies without receiving any airplay initially, and by 2008 the album had been certified platinum with over a million copies sold. Around The Fur was the Deftones second studio album and was released in October, 1997. “My Own Summer (Shove It)” was the first single to hit the airwaves and shot the band further into the rock scene. The group performed at Weenie Roast in 1998, and would again in 2003, as well as Almost Acoustic Christmas in 2000.

The album White Pony was released on June 20, 2000, debuting at #3 on the Billboard 200 chart. Frank Delgado (DJ Speedboat) had now been added to the band to add an extra element to their sound. In 2001, they won a Grammy Award for “Best Metal Performance” for their song “Elite.” In 2002, the album reached platinum status. The single “Change (In The House of Flies)” continues to get constant airplay on KROQ.

Their fourth (and self-titled) album was released in May 2003. The album took 12 months and about $2.5 million to produce. The album contained the singles “Minerva” and “Hexagram,” which both did relatively well. The album did well and stayed in the Billboard Top 100 for 9 weeks. The band toured for a while, then released B-Sides & Rarities in October 2005.

In 2006, Saturday Night Wrist was released, and has probably been their lowest-selling album to date. The band went with a new producer, and apparently there was some tension during recording that almost left them disbanded. The band spent most of 2006 and 2007 touring worldwide.

As the band was recording their sixth studio album, Eros, bassist Chi Cheng was seriously hurt in a car accident that has left him in a minimal conscious state. The band eventually ditched the music they had written for Eros thus far, saying that it didn’t encompass the sound they were looking for. In November, there was a two-night benefit show for Cheng that brought out a ton of rockstars.

Since Eros was a failed attempt, the band went back in to the studio and recorded their sixth and latest album, Diamond Eyes, featuring Sergio Vega on bass. Their first single was “Rocket Skates,” followed up by “Diamond Eyes,” which has started receiving airtime lately on KROQ.

Deftones will surely blow you away at Weenie Roast.