Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham revealed in a new interview with Download TV why the band has never released its long-shelved 2008 Eros album. Cunningham explained that the LP — the last to feature bassist Chi Cheng before a car crash put him in a coma that lasted until his death in 2013 — was never completed.
Cunningham explained, “It was never completed, and that’s what people don’t get, like ‘what, you’re just sitting on it?’ and I mean no, we’re not just sitting on it, we never finished it . . . there’s a lot attached to it as well, you know? And I understand that people are passionate about that and they want to hear Chi‘s last musical contribution.”
Deftones singer Chino Moreno told us a while back why the band decided to keep Eros under wraps: “Some of it was out of respect for Chi — 'Let's just put this album, you know, in a vault for a while and, you know, hold onto it.' It's the last thing that Chi's played on, so we hold it very dear to us. It's something that we have under our belt and when we feel the time is right we'll put it out.”
Cunningham added that the band has talked about issuing some of the material from the record, saying, “We’ve talked about putting out maybe a condensed version or an EP of four or five songs, something like that, and that kind of makes sense. But we have to get into all the legalities of it and all that stuff and also we have to finish it. But yeah, it would be nice for that to see the light of day, definitely.”
Deftones have completed their ninth studio album during the COVID-19 quarantine, with Cunningham hinting at a possible September release.
