Deftones bassist reflects on the making of ‘Gore’
Sergio Vega says he’s found that “Gore,” his third release since joining Deftones, is a very polarizing effort.
Pitchfork, for example, said it’s “easily” their “most engaging record since ‘White Pony’,” a Y2K release that felt like the nu-metal answer to “OK Computer” at the time. And Pitchfork may be onto something there.
But others weren’t sure what to make of it.
“Some people were very conflicted by it,” Vega says. “It’s my third album with the band and the first two albums, people wrapped their heads around them more easily, where this one, some people were like, ‘I don’t know.’ And then I would read those same people later — I spend a lot of time online, I see comments — and I saw people warm up to it and really start to get it.
“But then I also saw what you were saying, where people right out of the box were like, ‘This is just… I feel it, I know exactly where it’s coming from.’ To me, I think that’s awesome, the whole spectrum of it.”
Some of Vega’s favorite albums took a minute to digest.
“I remember first hearing Jane’s Addiction,” he says. “And I remember when I first heard the first Wu-Tang Clan record. And bands like My Bloody Valentine, where it was like a shock to my aesthetic. It felt ugly to me in a way. But it somehow called me back and they became some of my favorite records and favorite groups ever. So I’m not afraid to have something that shocks people or gets them upset at first. Over time, given the opportunity, especially when they see these songs live, they can get into it.”
Vega, who joined the fold in 2009 when a traffic collision left founding bassist Chi Cheng in a minimally conscious state until his death in 2013, checked in from the road to talk about the tour with Rise Against that makes its way to Phoenix July 9. He also