12 Bands Like Deftones, Split By What You Want

Why Most Deftones Recommendations Disappoint

Search this question and you will find lists of thirteen bands, twenty-two bands, even sixty-five bands, all presented flat. They mostly disappoint for the same reason.

The thing people actually mean by “the Deftones sound” is not heaviness and it is not atmosphere. It is the collision of the two inside one song: Stephen Carpenter playing something downtuned and brutal while Chino Moreno sings over it like he is somewhere else entirely, and Frank Delgado's textures blurring the space between. Take either element away and the resemblance collapses.

The band arrived at this deliberately. Formed in Sacramento in 1988 and initially swept in with the nu metal wave, they used White Pony, released 20 June 2000 on Maverick, to walk away from that label by pulling in post-hardcore, trip-hop, shoegaze and post-rock. That record is why this question is hard: they built a sound out of two things that are not supposed to share a room.

So this guide is sorted by which half you are chasing. Work out whether you came for the crush or the haze, and start in that section.

Start Here: Chino Moreno's Other Bands

The most overlooked answer is that the voice you want has three other outlets, and each explores a different part of what Deftones do.

Team Sleep

Chino's project with guitarist Todd Wilkinson, and the purest expression of the atmospheric half. Almost no heaviness, all texture and drift. If the parts of Deftones you replay are the quiet ones, this is the whole record made of them.

Start with: Team Sleep (2005)

Crosses

Electronic, dark, and closer to synth-pop than metal, which sounds like it should not work and does. It sits nearer to electronic body music than to anything on a Deftones record. This is the clearest evidence that the atmosphere in Deftones is Chino's instinct rather than a production choice.

Start with: Crosses (2014)

Palms

Chino with three former members of Isis, which puts his voice on top of post-metal. Slow, enormous, patient. The heavy half without the aggression.

Start with: Palms (2013)

The Ones Who Do Both

Loathe

The correct answer to this question, and the one most lists bury near the bottom. This Liverpool band spent I Let It In and It Took Everything (2020) alternating between genuinely punishing metalcore and soaring clean sections that sound like Deftones without imitating them. Chino Moreno is on record as a fan. If you read one recommendation here, read this one.

Start with: I Let It In and It Took Everything (2020)

Thrice

Began as post-hardcore and grew into something far stranger, absorbing electronics and post-rock along the way. Dustin Kensrue's voice is grittier than Chino's, but the willingness to put a fragile passage next to a violent one is the same instinct.

Start with: The Artist in the Ambulance (2003)

Holy Fawn

Arizona, and the most underrated band in this article. Described by their own fans as loud, heavy and beautiful in the same breath, they spend entire songs building a dream before detonating it. Closer to the emotional shape of Deftones than to the sound.

Start with: Death Spells (2018)

If You Want the Weight

Glassjaw

The single most common answer after Deftones themselves, and deservedly so. Daryl Palumbo's delivery moves between a croon and a scream inside a bar, and the guitars are angular where Carpenter's are blunt. Less atmosphere, more nerve.

Start with: Worship and Tribute (2002)

Vein.fm

Chaotic, abrasive, and far harsher than Deftones ever were, but they share the trick of dropping a beautiful passage into the middle of something ugly without warning. For when you want the crush turned up and the haze turned down.

Start with: Errorzone (2018)

Silver Snakes

Post-hardcore that drifted into industrial, which puts them somewhere between the two halves of this list but leaning heavy. Machine textures under real drums, which is a rarer combination than it sounds.

Start with: Saboteur (2015)

If You Want the Atmosphere

Nothing

Philadelphia shoegaze made by people with hardcore backgrounds, which is exactly why it lands for Deftones listeners. The guitars are enormous but never aggressive, and the vocals sit buried in the mix the way Chino's do on the quieter tracks.

Start with: Guilty of Everything (2014)

Deafheaven

Black metal blast beats underneath shoegaze guitars, which sounds academic and is genuinely overwhelming in practice. Sunbather is the record that convinced a lot of metal fans that beauty and extremity were not opposites, an argument goth had been making since 1979.

Start with: Sunbather (2013)

Cloakroom

Slow, heavy and unhurried, sitting where shoegaze meets doom. The least aggressive entry here and the best one for the specific feeling of a Deftones song that never resolves.

Start with: Time Well (2017)

The Ancestors

Two bands predate all of this and shaped it. Recommending them to a Deftones fan is less about similarity and more about showing where the idea came from.

Hum

Nineties Illinois band whose enormous, patient guitar tone has been quietly copied by half the bands above. Almost no aggression, endless weight.

Start with: You'd Prefer an Astronaut (1995)

Failure

Space-rock with a heaviness that sneaks up on you, and one of the most influential cult bands in American alternative music. If you want to hear the atmospheric half of Deftones before Deftones existed, start here.

Start with: Fantastic Planet (1996)

Where This Site's Artist Fits

Disclosure: this site belongs to the team behind Daemon Grey, a solo industrial goth metal artist from Brantford, Ontario. He is not on the list above and, unlike some of the artists we write about, he has never cited Deftones as an influence. It would be easy to claim he had. He did not, so we will not.

What is worth pointing out is a structural parallel rather than a lineage. Deftones took an atmospheric source from outside metal, shoegaze and trip-hop, and put it underneath downtuned guitars. Daemon Grey did the same manoeuvre with a different source. Asked which goth and industrial records shaped him, his answer was that none of them did:

I wasn't really influenced by goth or industrial music growing up. I didn't listen to it much, and I'm not particularly inspired by bands in those genres. My love for industrial and gothic elements came from within, and from my other interests.

The machine element in his records came from a love of electronic music carried into metal songwriting, arrived at independently rather than inherited from Ministry or Nine Inch Nails. That is the same move Deftones made, executed with different raw material.

If the atmosphere-under-heaviness combination is what you came for, that is the overlap, and he explains where his came from here. If you want the pure Deftones template, everything above will serve you better, and Loathe is where to start.

All Twelve Compared

Frequently Asked Questions

What band sounds most like Deftones?

Loathe. Their 2020 album I Let It In and It Took Everything combines heavy metalcore with soaring atmospheric sections in the same way Deftones do, and Chino Moreno has publicly praised them. Glassjaw is the closest older answer.

Why is it so hard to find bands like Deftones?

Because the sound is a combination rather than a single quality. It needs downtuned, genuinely heavy guitars and dream-pop atmosphere at the same time. Most bands do one convincingly, which is why flat recommendation lists so often miss.

What other bands is Chino Moreno in?

Team Sleep, Crosses and Palms. Team Sleep and Crosses explore the atmospheric side, while Palms, formed with three former members of Isis, is the heavier post-metal one.

What Deftones album should I start with?

White Pony (2000), where the band moved past nu metal by absorbing shoegaze, trip-hop and post-rock. Around the Fur (1997) is the heavier starting point.

What happened to Deftones' original bassist?

Chi Cheng was seriously injured in a car accident in November 2008 and remained in a semi-comatose state until his death in April 2013, aged 42. Sergio Vega played bass from 2009 until early 2021.

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