Chino Moreno says all that's left to complete Deftones' next album is his vocal tracks – which he intends to record after the band's appearances at Coachella.
Deftones play at Coachella in California this weekend and again next weekend, before Moreno will get into the vocal booth and lay down tracks on the follow-up to 2020 album Ohms.
Moreno tells KROQ, backstage at Coachella: "We haven't really talked much about it. We've just sort of been working on and off over the last year and a half from when we started writing.
"Basically, where we're sitting right now is we have a whole record recorded all musically. And it's pretty much my job right now to finish up the vocals.
"And I have, obviously, this show again next week, and then straight after that, I go back home to Oregon and I go in the studio.
"So as long as that takes. I hate to put a definite kind of timeframe, because we're not really in a rush. We want it to be great. I think that's most important. But it is coming and it's really good. We're really excited with what we've been working on."
He describes the songs as "invigorated" and says he loved returning to the creative experience of writing with the band.
He adds: "I feel like, overall, it's an invigorated kind of sound. It's, like, after all these years, you go in, and it's, like, we hadn't written a record since what was it? Pre-Covid when we were last in the studio.
"We've been playing shows, but we hadn't really got into being creative. The creative part, to me, is always kind of the funnest part of being in this band. Performing is great, but coming up with something out of nothing, that feeling cannot be topped.
"And so when you get in the room with your friends, we're laughing, we're having fun and then someone does something and then I react to it or they react to what I'm doing, it goes in a circle and then, all of a sudden, we lift our heads up and there's something that exists that didn't exist before we walked in that room.
"That's just great."
