5 Deftones Songs We Really Want To Hear At Outbreak Fest At All Points East

More than three decades into their career, Deftones are no strangers to performing in the UK capital. From intimate rooms to arenas and festival fields, the Sacramento titans have built a long history with London – and with a catalogue this deep, there’s always the possibility they’ll shake up the setlist and pull something unexpected from the vault.

On August 23, Deftones descend on Victoria Park to headline Outbreak Fest at All Points East, topping a stacked bill that also boasts IDLES, Amyl and the Sniffers and Interpol.

With more than 30 years of music at their disposal, Chino Moreno and co. aren’t exactly short of options. Sure, there are staples we’d be astonished not to hear, but it’s those deeper cuts and unexpected additions that can turn a great Deftones set into something truly special.

So, ahead of what promises to be a seismic night in Victoria Park, here are five Deftones songs we desperately hope make the cut.

Kimdracula — Saturday Night Wrist (2006)

There are deep cuts, and then there are songs that inspire the sort of devotion usually reserved for religious experiences. Kimdracula firmly belongs in the latter category. The track appears towards the back end of Deftones’ brilliantly strange 2006 fifth album, Saturday Night Wrist.

It captures almost everything that makes Deftones such a singular band: Stephen Carpenter’s colossal guitar work colliding with Chino Moreno’s ethereal melodies before the whole thing erupts into something simultaneously beautiful and crushing.

It might not carry the mainstream recognition of Change (In The House Of Flies) or My Own Summer (Shove It), but let those opening chords ring out across Victoria Park and watch thousands of Deftones diehards collectively lose their minds.

Rosemary — Koi No Yokan (2012)

If there’s one Deftones song seemingly designed to soundtrack the sun disappearing behind the London skyline, it’s Rosemary. The six-minute-plus epic sits near the end of 2012’s Koi No Yokan, an album overflowing with exactly the kind of atmosphere Deftones do better than almost anyone.

The track spends its opening minutes floating through space before Carpenter’s guitars come crashing down like a collapsing planet. It’s Deftones at their most cinematic: patient, hypnotic and absolutely enormous when it finally detonates.

Picture it: darkness settling over Victoria Park, that opening guitar line drifting across the field and tens of thousands of people being pulled into its gravitational orbit.

Goosebumps wouldn’t quite cover it.

Lovers — Hexagram (2003)

Now we’re getting greedy.

Originally recorded around the era of Deftones’ 2003 self-titled album, Lovers ultimately surfaced as the B-side to the Hexagram single, helping it become one of the great cult favourites in the band’s catalogue.

And it deserves another moment in the spotlight.

Jagged, anxious and viciously heavy, it represents the darker side of early-2000s Deftones while still carrying that unmistakable sense of melody beneath the noise.

Plenty of casual fans in Victoria Park might need a second to recognise it. The hardcore devotees, however, would be screaming before Chino had even opened his mouth.

Sometimes the greatest festival moments aren’t the songs everybody knows are coming. They’re the ones you can’t quite believe the band have decided to play.

Beware — Saturday Night Wrist (2006)

Saturday Night Wrist has undergone one hell of a reassessment over the years, and Beware – track three on the 2006 record – is a perfect example of why.

For much of its runtime, the song lurks rather than attacks, Moreno sounding positively haunted as the tension steadily builds. Then Stephen Carpenter arrives with that ending riff: a filthy, monstrous slab of guitar that sounds capable of rearranging internal organs.

Through a festival-sized PA in Victoria Park?

We need to know what that feels like.

Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) — Around the Fur (1997)

Yes, it’s one of the obvious ones.

No, we don’t care.

Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) arrived on Deftones’ 1997 second album, Around the Fur, and went on to become one of the songs that helped push the band towards a much wider audience.

Few songs capture the emotional contradiction at the heart of Deftones quite like it. It’s crushing without simply being aggressive, euphoric while somehow sounding desperately sad, and almost three decades later it remains one of the band’s defining songs.

More importantly, it was built for nights like this.

When that instantly recognisable opening guitar rings across Victoria Park and thousands of voices join Chino, it’ll be the sort of communal festival moment capable of making even the most battle-hardened metalhead suddenly discover they’ve got something in their eye.

Deftones could probably play for three hours and we’d still leave complaining that they missed something. That’s the problem with having a catalogue this deep.

But if even if none of these make an appearance on August 23, Victoria Park will still be in for something very special.

Final tickets are on sale now. Visit allpointseastfestival.com.