Deftones find pot of gold
By KELLY WILSON
Get Out

When Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham tells you “now it's nothing but rainbows, not a cloud in the sky,” referring to the bands’ lives, it’s hard not to laugh.

Rainbows?
This is certainly not a word one can imagine coming out of the mouth of a musician whose mighty rock band played last year’s Summer Sanitarium Tour.

“It’s all good,” 31-year-old Cunningham says. “It really is.”

But life wasn’t so good when the band — which includes lead singer and guitarist Chino Moreno, bassist Chi Cheng, turntablist/ keyboardist Frank Delgado and guitarist Stephen Carpenter — was recording their fourth album, a self-titled CD, which was released last year.

“That record was self-titled and everyone was like, ‘It’s not your first record. Why is it self-titled?’ ” Cunningham says. “We really didn’t have an explanation but I named it the other day. It’s ‘Dark Days.’ That whole period was just a strange time for us. We had been touring forever and were burnt out and fried and not communicating with each other and we went and did it.”

After touring for seven months (“We usually tour for a good year and a half on each record,” he says) in support of the follow-up to 2000’s Grammy-winning platinum-seller, “White Pony,” the band took a break and then rented a house in Malibu where they began working on new music.

“We were down there for about three months,” he says. “We wanted to get back together and focus on writing songs. We wrote a gang of songs which was lovely. Everyone was just having a good time together and enjoying each others’ company.”

After a brief, month-long tour, the Deftones will hit the studio in early November to record their fifth album, which will be released sometime this spring. Cunningham says the group will road test a few new tracks during their live performances on this tour.

“In the past, everyone was worried about us playing new songs,’’ he says. “They were like, ‘Don’t play any new songs because of the Internet.’ (Expletive) it. We’re going to do what the (expletive) we want to do and play our music and have a damn good time doing it.”

Cunningham says the band is looking forward to returning to Arizona where they’ll play the Celebrity Theatre this week.

“Our tour manager lives in Gilbert,’’ he says. “And me and Chino each have a room in his house so we’ll kick it there. There’s always a good time to be had in Arizona.’’