Deftones: Saturday Night Wrist

The Deftones started working on Saturday Night Wrist, their fifth album for Maverick Records, back in 2004. They were happily on tour at the time, but their label told them their self-titled 2003 LP had failed to live up to commercial expectations and they needed to make a new record soon. So early that spring, the bandmates – the lineup is rounded out by bassist Chi Cheng, drummer Abe Cunningham, and DJ Frank Delgado – found a house in Malibu where they could live and work together. “We figured that instead of having the band be like a job, where we had to punch in and punch out, we would just hang out and make music together,” Moreno says.

While in Malibu, the Deftones searched for a new producer. They wanted somebody who could help shape the songs, as their longtime producer Terry Date had done, but they didn’t want to go with Date again because he was too close a friend, and they needed someone who could really crack the whip. For about a week, they worked with Dan “the Automator” Nakamura (Gorillaz, Dr. Octagon), with whom Carpenter got on famously, but then veteran producer Bob Ezrin, who has worked with Pink Floyd, Kiss, Jane’s Addiction, and countless others, agreed to come hear the band play.

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