Aging extraordinarily well as they speed towards their fortieth anniversary of formation, Sacramento's Deftones have long been a site favourite for MetalReviews as well as being a formative band for your reviewer in his musical journey. And although their past couple of albums have been controversial elsewhere, for me both Gore and Ohms were fantastic releases that only grew better with repeated listens. What a great feeling, then, not to be an outlier for once but to join in the near-universal acclaim for the band's tenth full-length private music! It's the kind of release that already feels like the record of the summer even as it came out in late August thanks to preceding singles my mind is a mountain and milk of the madonna instantly seizing the zeitgeist with apparently much TikTok domination amongst the Zoomers... "apparently" because this reviewer has recently hit the big 4-0 and is proud to have been too old for the Chinese propaganda app for quite some time!

Not, however, too old for Deftones, a band with an average age in the 50s at this point and yet one that plenty of us have grown with. Sure, maybe they are pandering with those lower case album and song titles yet once you listen to the full album and realise how good the writing is, how expertly the whole thing flows, how even the individual songs are superb enough for you to question why on earth relatively weaker pieces like my mind is a mountain were chosen as singles to begin with... all is forgiven! For this is the best thing Deftones have produced in a while, an especially bright gem amongst a discography already full of them. Each and every track is enjoyable in its own right, effortlessly blending the band's post-nu-metal/alt-metal/shoegaze/whatever you want to call it history with something new and fresh-feeling, the usual yearning romanticism and eroticism given an extra burst of hopeful optimism.

At this point the band's strengths are universally known yet they truly feel like a cohesive unit here, the likes of locked club showing off both Stephen Carpenter's groovy riffs and Chino Moreno's always-gripping vocals especially well. The latter is better than ever with age, always solid yet giving some of his best performances in multiple albums, and stretching himself on finale departing the body - that deeper cadence more akin to the Scott Kellys of the world than what we're used to expecting from Chino! Yet throughout the album he's captivating, adding intense emotion to the usual sensual languidness of the band's music, metal dream just another example. Much praise is also due to drummer Abe Cunningham and newish bassist Fred Sablan here, making tracks such as ecdysis with their performances which are highlighted thanks to a production courtesy of Nick Raskulinecz (who also worked on Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan) coating the already blissful music with some extra magic making this a perfect sit-back-and-relax-to album.

infinite source, for example, could be a lost track from the past, having an easy-to-vibe-to rhythm and hooks galore with a dreamy layer of fuzz that makes it feel timeless; it fits in so well here that imagining it on, say, White Pony feels blasphemous. What doesn't feel blasphemous, however, is the comparison of private music to that classic. The build and triumphant peak of souvenir feels so ageless without being self-repetitive, that it's a surprise it's a new track and not a resurrected older piece, for instance, even ignoring the false end and ambient outro. As ever, the emotional weight invested into pieces like i think about you all the time is easy to feel, as physical as the groove of milk of the madonna, something like an updated Mein or Swerve City with its slightly more urgent pace and complex backing. And although not all will love the most nu-metalish piece here, the semi-rapped melancholic aggressiveness of cut hands, it more than fits its place in the tracklisting and, again, feels like it could be straight from one of the band's past releases even if it is more Adrenaline than White Pony. As a package, private music feels like it lives up to its title, a set of songs that are far more than the sum of their parts, a secret message from the band to you to treasure and treat as your own. Rewarding, entrancing, enticing, and a joy on every listen, it feels good to be a fan of this band and their acclaim is well-earned.