Deftones Drummer Abe Cunningham On Horny Metal: “That’s What We Are From Now On”

We spoke to Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham about the rise of horny metal (and cum metal), and the band‘s newest era with private music.

Horny metal – and cum metal – are terms that have been kicking around the internet for a while now, usually in the same sentence as bands like Sleep Token, Bad Omens, and HEALTH. Deftones, however, could be described as one of the forefathers of horny metal (alongside bands like Type O Negative, depending on who you ask) before the internet’s favourite subgenre even had a name. But have they ever actually described themselves as such?

According to Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham: no. Well, not until now.

Speaking with Cunningham ahead of the recent release of their album private music, we took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of the rise of horny metal and where Deftones sat within it all.

“We’re [all] just human…just horny people,” he says as to why listeners are rallying so heavily behind the genre. “I mean, I think there’s…definitely a sensuality to [our] music, you know?”

“I didn’t know that there was [such] a thing as horny metal…I better get hip to this…I swear to God, I didn’t know that.”

Asked if he’d also heard of horny metal’s subgenre cousin (if you will), cum metal, Cunningham is equally as stunned. With a laugh, he says: “that’s what [Deftones] are from now on, I’m gonna go and that’s what I’m gonna say to everybody.”

“It’s cum metal motherf**ker, what!”

In between all this horny, orgasmic metal talk, we chatted about private music and how the newest Deftones album came together alongside producer Nick Raskulinecz, who previously worked on 2010’s Diamond Eyes and 2012’s Koi No Yokan.

Cunningham says working with Raskulinecz is “so much f**king fun,” and that the producer is “able to extract the best out of us, individually and as a band…and that’s based on trust.”

“I mean, some of the things that he’s got Chino to do on this record vocally, things he’s got him to try, [we would have] never tried, because maybe there’s some doubt [there]. And he’s got these things out of Chino this time around that…I never knew that he had that within his voice.”

While the band is riding the high of the newest record, it’s difficult to think of Deftones without looking back at their iconic legacy. Reflecting on the White Pony era, Cunningham says: “We were out of our minds then, but we were also…in a really good spot.”

“That’s before things got really shitty in our band,” he says. “There was a big period of time where we were still making records and we were touring and we were out doing it, but it was brutal.” Cunningham says after White Pony, the constant cycle of writing, recording, then touring that the band got “caught in” was a difficult time. “It wasn’t always fun,” he adds.

Things are very different for Deftones now. Cunningham says the way they created private music was a much more sustainable approach, initially introduced by Raskulinecz during the creation of Diamond Eyes. “We had been working one way for the longest time, and…things got done, but it was hard. We would always work late and all through the night and just be fried in the morning,” he says,

“With Nick, he’s like, ‘no…you’re gonna come in at noon for writing and be done [by] six or seven,'” he says. “And we’re like oh wait, we can still have mornings…be normal, go to work and have a really good, productive day and then..still chill out. And that was something we needed.”

“It sounds ridiculous, but we didn’t know that we could…And we’re like, what? We’d be up till four in the morning every night, jamming at our spot out here. And that was something that was like, wow, okay. And then we employed that the next few times we’ve worked, and then every [other time] since then,” Cunningham says.

Deftones newest album private music released on Friday (August 22) via Reprise and Warner Records – the follow on from 2020’s Ohms. Despite the gap between records, the band has continued to be a mainstay in the alternative music scene – and maybe the rise of horny metal (and cum metal, baddiecore, whatever your favourite cursed flavour of genre naming conventions is) has been a part of that.