Why Frank Delgado Felt All The Feelings About New Record 'Gore'

Calling in from tour in the middle of Texas, Frank Delgado sums up the overriding feeling during the creation of their new album Gore. "All the feelings!" he starts with a chuckle. "There's a lot of laughing and yelling and fighting — that's never changed. It's all of it, I think that's why we're able to play with all of those dynamics and have those really loud peaks, and then there's a lot of softer moments, and there's aggression there and smoother songs — we kind of like to play with all of the emotions, all those things go into making our records," says Delgado, before admitting that there's never too much of a plan.

"If you're familiar with our band we've always kind of toyed with that — with the good and the bad, the ugly and the pretty, and it's no different here."

"We've never actually stepped up with a concept or having any idea of where we're gonna take it, it's just we all are writing and creating and then we look back at the best songs and see what it is — it kind of builds itself... In all honesty it's just five guys getting together and trying to make a record that we're proud of, not for the year but for the next ten years that we look back at it, and that's all we've really been trying to do for the last 15, 20 years."

With a longer than usual wait since 2012's Koi No Yokan, Delgado says Gore was created in a more relaxed environment and timeframe. "I think this time we were actually a little more excited to take our time digesting, go home after a writing session for a little while, come back to write and play maybe some of the ideas that we soundchecked — we started to do shows while we were writing and recording the record. So it just led to a record that we were able to kind of... it's a privilege to take a lot longer than normal, you know. In all honesty there's no formula to this, this just felt like the right thing to do at this time," he says.

Since the release of their debut Adrenaline in 1995, the strength of Deftones has always been in their contrasts. A rather unpleasant word, Gore is in stark contrast to the soothing album imagery of pink birds in flight. "If you're familiar with our band we've always kind of toyed with that — with the good and the bad, the ugly and the pretty, and it's no different here. The imagery and the titles usually come last second, believe it or not. I think Gore was one of the song titles that we had picked and it just kind of fit the album."

Originally scheduled for the now-defunct Soundwave festival, Delgado assures that Deftones will schedule new dates to show off Gore soon. "I know there's talk, I don't have any specifics but we always try and make it to Australia. I don't see how we would ever go through a whole album cycle and not make it to Australia. We love being there, so yeah, hopefully [we get there] sooner than later."