As a teenager, he becomes an obsessive skateboarder. Born Augin Los Angeles, Carpenter is brought up in a middle class household in Sacramento by his American father and Mexican mother. McClatchy High School with Stephen Carpenter. The Sacramento music scene is a melting pot of styles where bands supported one another regardless of genre, creating a lot of cross-pollination of musical ideas. 'My heart has always been into sad music,' he'll tell Katherine Turman and Jon Wiederhorn in their book Louder Than Hell. Similarly, Moreno never settles on one type of music, instead listening to everything from punk rock and the Beastie Boys to Morrissey, the Cure and Depeche Mode. ' I had a lot of different types of friends. ' There were probably only, like, five of us in a three-mile radius that skateboarded,' he'll tell Flavir Magazine in 1996. Moreno avoids falling into that life by getting into breakdancing and skateboarding. Moreno and Cunningham both grow up in a 'shitty neighbourhood,' in Sacramento where gang activity is common. His father Sid is also a musician and his stepfather, Neil, is a drummer. His family moves to Sacramento and he starts playing drums and guitar at an early age. He is given the nickname Chino, a riff on Chinito, the Spanish word for Chinese and also his grandfather's nickname.Ībraham Cunningham is born Jin Long Beach. 'To worry about what other people think is pointless at this point.'Ĭamilo Wong Moreno is born Jto Deborah Wong and Camilo Moreno. 'Although we have stumbled upon formulas and things that work, the challenge is to not follow them and try and put ourselves in a place that we can be unpredictable,' Moreno tells Exclaim! today.

Perpetually lumped in with the nü-metal scene that briefly captured mainstream attention at the end of the '90s and early 2000s, throughout their career the Sacramento quintet - singer Chino Moreno, guitarist Stephen Carpenter, bass player Sergio Vega, keyboardist and turntablist Frank Delgado and drummer Abe Cunningham - have perpetually turned left when fans and critics expect them to head right.Īlthough they never reached the commercial heights of their peers, they remain a beguiling force in rock, soldiering through fleeting trends, band acrimony, drugs and death only to emerge with some of their strongest material. Published Deftones always buck expectations.

Deftones albums sold