REVIEW: Deftones unite 90s faithful & TikTok teens with blistering Auckland gig

There's nothing quite like seeing Spark Arena packed to the rafters with several generations of Kiwi metal fans to restore your faith in a world on fire. 

More than three decades on from their debut album, Deftones have enjoyed a massive resurgence of late - thanks in part to a viral explosion on TikTok - which saw swathes of young fans join the sold-out crowd on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday night in Auckland.

For stalwart supporters, it had been an agonising 12 years since the Sacramento nu-metal pioneers played in Aotearoa at the last Big Day Out, and the pent-up energy was palpable. 

It's a little unusual to see a venue almost at full capacity for an opening act, but then again, it's a little unusual to have a seminal alt-rock act like Interpol as the entree. 

Were the indie trio a little too obtuse and elegant for a Deftones crowd? Maybe. Were they still f*cking brilliant? Yes. Paul Banks' vocals remain record-perfect, and the band's austere intensity injected a hit of early 2000s nostalgia for a good chunk of the audience. 

My personal devastation at Interpol leaving their biggest hit 'Slow Hands' off the setlist had to be quickly pushed aside as we waited for Deftones to start, and I wondered (worried) that they might also forgo some of their most iconic tracks to make room for their new era. 

Not to worry. Chino Moreno and the rest of the band exploded onto the stage with 'Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)' from their defining 1997 album 'Around The Fur'. 

And while Stephen Carpenter (guitar), Frank Delgado (keyboards and turntables), and Abe Cunningham (drums and percussion) immediately struck us with their tight, technical mastery, we were to make no mistakes: This was the Chino Moreno show. 

Now knocking 53, Chino could easily be mistaken for a man half his age - in stage presence, vocal ability and sheer stamina. The man is a machine, even when he took a tumble on stage later in the set, seamlessly turning it into a kind of nu-metal roly-poly and bouncing back up without missing a beat.

The next song, 'Swerve City', plucked us from our atmospheric, shoegaze dreamscape and smacked us around the ears with the crunchy, chugging riffs of the more traditional metal sound the band leaned into in 2012. These guys had the unenviable task of catering a set list to an arena full of different ages and Deftones preferences, and they did a damn good job of it. 

The opening chords of songs from the band's 2010 record 'Diamond Eyes' and 2012's 'Koi No Yokan' were received with thunderous applause and piercing screams from much of the crowd, proving the band's enduring impact well beyond their initial success.

The ageing rocker dad and teenage son sitting next to us sent it particularly hard to those tracks, finding that sweet transgenerational common ground only a special kind of band can provide. Later in the night, I watched the dad send a celebratory fire emoji in response to his son's message "I'm in", confirming he'd jumped the barrier to join the mosh from the seats. 

Those of us firmly entrenched in the 'Around The Fur' and 'White Pony' era might have found our interest waning a little during the later tracks, but the stage production and virtuosity on show kept us engaged. The visuals were the kind that might have made you wish you had ingested some kind of psychedelic substance - if you were that way inclined - but could also make you immediately regret it if you did.

Clips from the surrealist avant-garde film 'Holy Mountain' were interspersed with undulating prisms of rainbow light, ballerinas dancing on burning cities and cinematic backdrops of a giant orange rising sun and moody crashing waves.

Chino's dynamism navigating from breathy whispers to dissonant screams while leaping off amps makes him a man of few words between songs, but his joy at seeing a sold-out crowd in little old NZ after this many years was clear.

"This is f*cking beautiful!" he said, "This is f*cking blowing my mind right now. Thank every single one of you, right here, right now."

Chino had the crowd in the palm of his hand… when it wasn't swinging the mic around his head like a lasso. At one point, a spontaneous outburst of simply "YES!" almost brought the house down. 

The set's midsection featured 'milk of the madonna' and 'my mind is a mountain' from 'Private Music', the band's noisier, brutish record that only came out last year as tickets to the North American leg of this tour were already selling out.

During the shimmering, ethereal 'Entombed', a lone lighter was held in the air amongst a sea of phones - a flickering relic from a veteran fan, reminding everyone of the 90s subculture that started it all. 

As the name implies, 'Change (In The House of Flies)' shifted the entire energy of the arena, with some 12,000 fans on their feet, heads thrown back in solidarity with Chino's screams. It's always a good sign when people are holding onto the handrails to mosh in the seated area. 

With the setlist proper finishing on a newer song called 'infinite source', the band didn't demand 5 minutes of stomping and cheering to return for an encore. After a short interlude, they burst back on with 'Cherry Waves' - now TikTok famous - before blowing the roof off with 'My Own Summer (Shove it)'. The night was ending with a cacophony of unbridled chaos, as it should. 

To close, Deftones threw it right back to 1995 with '7 Words' from their debut album. Chino was 22 when 'Adrenaline' came out, and to be singing those lyrics to new legions of fans that same age now - and the ones who were there from the start - is pretty unreal.

Deftones have proven they aren't just surviving on nostalgia; they're still one of the most vital, visceral rock bands ever.

Setlist - Deftones at Auckland's Spark Arena - 13 May 2026

• Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)

• Swerve City

• Diamond Eyes

• Feiticeira

• Digital Bath

• Tempest

• Milk of the Madonna

• My Mind is a Mountain

• Beauty School

• Sextape

• Rocket Skates

• Rosemary

• Around the Fur

• Entombed

• Hole in the Earth

• Change (In the House of Flies)

• Genesis

• Departing the Body

• Infinite Source

Encore:

• Cherry Waves

• My Own Summer (Shove It)

• 7 Words