Deftones‘ shelved album Eros is likely to remain unreleased, according to new remarks from frontman Chino Moreno.
In a new article in The Guardian in which Moreno fielded fan questions, the singer was inevitably asked about Eros.
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The project was intended to be Deftones’ sixth studio album back in 2008, with the band hitting the studio with producer Terry Date that April. Tragically, the sessions were halted in November after bassist Chi Cheng and his sister were involved in a car accident in Santa Clara, California, which left Cheng in a coma.
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The band later announced that it was shelving Eros indefinitely in July 2009 to write a record with new bassist Sergio Vega. The only song to surface from the sessions in mixed/mastered form was titled “Smile,” and it was uploaded to YouTube by Moreno himself on April 13th, 2014, marking one year since the passing of Chi Cheng. The song was quickly deleted by Deftones’ record label.
“We’re always asked about Eros,” Moreno said in the new piece in The Guardian. “It will most likely never see the light of day. That would involve going back to that period and resurrecting unfinished things, and somehow bringing them to completion. ‘Dallas’ is the only [other] song that was anywhere near finished.”
Moreno then referenced the band’s new album, Private Music, saying, “This new album started with ideas we’d been working on alone, through the pandemic. And when we got together to actually start making the record, none of us wanted to look back at those ideas from the pandemic — we wanted to capture the moment we’re in today. So going back to try to capture what was happening back during Eros, and finishing those ideas, doesn’t really make sense.”
The new remarks echo those he made back in 2016 when he told The Independent that the Eros material “lacking a little bit” and unfinished, and later in 2022 when Moreno told Uproxx that “to open up those files” would be too “emotionally heavy.”
Meanwhile, Deftones just kicked off a North American tour in support of Private Music. The band plays Monday night (August 25th) in Calgary, Alberta, with the outing running through mid-September festival appearances at Shaky Knees and Louder Than Life. Get tickets here.
See Deftones performing “Smile” at their Dia De Los Deftones festival in 2019 below.