Stephen Carpenter
Blowing Your Head Off
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Before the Deftones went on the Ozzfest tour this summer, guitarist Stephen Carpenter talked to Nude as the News from his home in California. Writer David Thomas asks Carpenter about their last year of touring, and their much anticipated album White Pony.
NATN: Why tour on Ozzfest?
Stephen Carpenter: The whole reason we chose to do the Ozzfest is because we've never done it before. We thought it would just be fun to play with that many bands in that large a scope.
NATN: What about the new material you've been working on?
SC: Ozzfest interfered with our plans for doing the new album. Our original schedule was during the Ozzfest. Now we’re going to take the energy from touring, when we’re all loose and warmed up, straight to the studio.
NATN: What's the difference between the Warped tour and Ozzfest?
SC: We had a great time on the Warped tour. We chose it because the actual vibe is us. It’s naturally what we do. The way we live our lives. But Ozzfest had all our friends on it, bands we had toured with for years. We totally fit in to that lifestyle too. And it dwarfs the Warped tour in scope.
But on the Warped tour there wasn’t a day that went by that we didn’t have a good time.
NATN: What about the other tour you did with Sabbath and Pantera this past year?
SC:From our perspective we felt blessed to be part of the most amazing two generations of music ever made. The crowd was definitely receptive to us. We totally went over on that crowd.
The thing you can say about Black Sabbath is that they made metal what it is. Undoubtedly. If it wasn’t for Sabbath there would be no metal like we know it.
NATN: And you also headlined a tour with Quicksand opening for you, what was that like?
SC: The headlining tour with Quicksand was one of the best tours we ever had. It was a dream of ours for a long time. They were a big inspiration for us because they struggled through their internal dealings. They all have the same problems we do. And they’re learning to function. There’s no such thing as a functioning band, there's always some level of chaos.
NATN: And tell us about White Pony.
SC: Sound-wise you’re going to hear us, but we’re going to go in and out of different textures. We’ve been listening to electronic music for a while, now we’re finally learning how to cross the two boundaries where we don’t get mixed up. But it's going to sound like us. It will even have a harder edge. It'll blow people's heads off. Its going to fuck people's minds up.
I've being having more fun (recording) now than ever before. It's allowing me to play heavier stuff that I've wanted to do, along with the new synthetic textures.
NATN: When can we expect to get our heads blown off?
SC: It'll be out in the winter. We're hoping for late November but it probably won't be out until January.
DAVID THOMAS |