“I still don’t have an answer… It’s sad, I want him onstage with us at every show”: Even Chino Moreno doesn’t know why Stephen Carpenter isn’t touring with Deftones

Chino Moreno has been asked to shed some light on why Stephen Carpenter still isn’t touring internationally with Deftones – but it turns out he’s just as in the dark as we are.

Back in 2022, the band’s electric guitar player announced he would be sitting out of any future international tours, saying, “With everything going on in the world, I'm just not ready to leave home and leave the country yet.”

Last year, Carpenter was absent when Deftones performed in front of 50,000 fans at a San Francisco concert headlined by System of a Down. It was a notable omission to the Deftones lineup, which was patched up by guitarists Lance Jackman and Shaun Lopez, who also perform in his stead on the group’s international dates. At the time, neither Carpenter nor the band released a statement to explain the situation.

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Now, Moreno has spoken about the continued confusion, revealing to Metal Hammer that he, too, is perplexed as to what’s actually going on.

“I don’t want to speak for him. And even if I could, I still don’t have an answer,” says Moreno when asked if Carpenter has any plans to fly and tour with Deftones. “Really I don’t. It’s still something that I think he is figuring out.

“And if he does have an answer, I think it’d be great if one day he would share it. But yeah, we support him. We have to. He’s our friend. And his health, be it physically or mentally, always takes the forefront of anything.”

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“It’s sad, I want him onstage with us at every show. If you ask me what I prefer, I want him there every day, every time we do anything, with the band. But it literally comes down to: there’s two ways to deal with it. We accept what he can and will do, or we just don’t play. And we want to play.”

In a recent conversation with Zane Lowe, Carpenter – who was interviewed alongside Moreno – revealed he had Type 2 diabetes. He became aware that something wasn’t quite right during a Coachella gig, and reflected, “That is what I considered to be my bottom”.

“I throw around the terms ‘blessing’ and ‘God’ all the time, because all of this has woken me up to that kind of reality,” Carpenter told Lowe. “I’m very grateful to be here, because I had no idea how close to being gone I was.”

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Carpenter has also spoken about his struggle with anxiety related to post-pandemic travel and touring.

From Moreno’s perspective, health concerns are at the forefront of Carpenter’s mind, understandably so, and the band is there to support him with whatever his bandmate is working through.

“Stephen gets very obsessed about anything, whether it’s cameras, or technology or whatever. Now his obsession is his blood sugar,” Moreno concludes. “So every night, he’s looking on his phone. He’s like, ‘Yo, I’m down to this mode, whatever.’ And our bus is super-clean.

“Obviously there’s no alcohol, no sugar. And it’s great for both of us, because every night we get on the bus and we talk about the show, and then we talk about our health and our stuff. It sounds a little boomery.”

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