Deftones are no strangers to putting on great shows in the UK capital. Over the past three decades they have worked their way through some of London’s most celebrated venues, from legendary sold-out nights at the now-gone-but-never-forgotten Astoria, through Brixton Academy and Alexandra Palace, to last summer’s 25,000-capacity Crystal Palace Park show. Earlier this year they packed out The O2 Arena. Now, just months later, around 50,000 people had descended on Victoria Park for All Points East Presents Outbreak, making this the largest UK headline crowd of their career.

Before we talk about the music, though, we’ve got to address the dust.

London’s unusually hot, dry summer had taken its toll on Victoria Park, and several days of festival traffic had ground what remained of the grass into a fine powder that got everywhere. Yes, everywhere! Every mosh or circle pit sent another cloud into the air, while bandanas and masks became less of a fashion choice and more essential survival gear. At times, east London looked less like a city park and more like Burning Man.

Thankfully, it did little to spoil one of the strongest alternative bills London has seen this summer. Outbreak has never been interested in keeping things neatly inside genre lines, and that was reflected in a day that could move from Interpol to AFI, Amyl and the Sniffers and IDLES before Deftones even appeared.

Interpol offered something completely different. Their cool, tightly wound post-punk shouldn’t necessarily have sat comfortably between all this noise, but that was exactly why it worked. “Obstacle 1”, “Evil”, “Slow Hands” and “PDA” provided a welcome shift in mood without ever feeling out of place.

Over on the West Stage, AFI had Davey Havok still every inch the frontman. “Girl’s Not Grey”, “The Days of the Phoenix”, “Silver and Cold” and “Miss Murder” gave the set plenty of ammunition, delivered by a band who still looked interested in attacking a festival slot rather than simply turning up and running through the favourites.

Amyl and the Sniffers were exactly what you’d want from a festival set: fast, loud and completely uninterested in pacing themselves. It’s a cliché, but Amy Taylor is nothing short of a force of nature in a live setting. She worked the main stage like she was trying to start an argument with 50,000 people at once, while the pits below sent yet more clouds of Victoria Park dust into the air.

Then it was back over to the West Stage for IDLES, who just about stole the whole day. Their set was chaos in the best possible sense. Pits opened everywhere, Joe Talbot barked his way through the set and the atmosphere felt closer to a packed club show than an outdoor festival.

Once they finished, a sizeable chunk of Victoria Park immediately started moving back towards the East Stage.

For anyone as old as me who remembers Deftones playing the Astoria or Brixton, the sight of 50,000 people waiting for them decades later was genuinely extraordinary. Not because they aren’t great or don’t deserve it — far from it — but because of just how young so much of the audience was. Plenty were clearly seeing Deftones for the first time, standing alongside fans who had been with them since ‘Around the Fur’ or ‘White Pony’.

Social media has unquestionably introduced another generation to songs like “Cherry Waves”, “Sextape” and “Be Quiet and Drive”, but a handful of viral tracks don’t explain 50,000 people turning up in a London park. Deftones’ catalogue has simply aged remarkably well. The crushing guitars, melody and atmosphere sound far less tied to the late ’90s than much of the music they were once lumped in with.

Opening the set with “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” from 1997’s ‘Around the Fur’ before crashing straight into the album’s title track was a hell of a way to prove it. What followed was a 95-minute, career-spanning set that reached from their earliest material through to 2025’s ‘Private Music’.

“Feiticeira” and “Korea” represented ‘White Pony’; “Rocket Skates”, “Risk” and “Sextape” came from ‘Diamond Eyes’; while “Rosemary”, “Tempest” and “Entombed” brought the huge, atmospheric sweep of ‘Koi No Yokan’.

More impressive was how naturally the new material sat beside them. “my mind is a mountain”, “locked club”, “infinite source” and “milk of the madonna” all sounded nothing short of incredible through the festival PA. “my mind is a mountain”, arriving only three songs in, already felt completely at home alongside material people have loved for decades. It would be no surprise to hear some of these songs still occupying Deftones setlists years from now, just as those late-’90s and early-2000s cuts do today.

The size of the occasion clearly wasn’t lost on Chino Moreno either. Pausing to look across Victoria Park, he told the crowd: “What a fucking wonderful day today. So much good music, so many beautiful faces.” Coming from a band playing the biggest UK headline show of its career, it felt less like routine stage patter and more like someone taking in what was actually happening in front of him.

Then came the songs capable of bringing the whole park together. “Change (In the House of Flies)” had thousands singing every word, “My Own Summer (Shove It)” still hit with ridiculous force, and the reaction to “Cherry Waves” in the encore showed just how completely another generation has taken this band to heart.

By the time “Lotion” and “7 Words” brought the night to a close, the 50,000 figure almost felt secondary. This wasn’t a veteran band living off its past. The new songs landed, the deep cuts still mattered and tracks written before many in the crowd were born were being screamed back at the stage.

Almost 30 years into their relationship with London, Deftones have reached the biggest UK headline audience of their career without sanding down any of the strange edges that made people fall for them in the first place.

One generation remembers the Astoria. Another has just started its own Deftones story in a dust-filled Victoria Park alongside 50,000 others.

That felt pretty generational to me.

All Points East 2026 continues with Tyler, The Creator on 28 and 29 August, before Twenty One Pilots close the festival on 30 August.

Tickets and further information are available via the official All Points East website.