Deftones frontman Chino Moreno has spoken to Metal Hammer today, reflecting on the band’s rise to prominence in the late 90’s, and his opinion of Deftones’ misrepresentation by the music media, as part of the ‘nu-metal’ trend of the day.

Moreno revealed that Deftones repeatedly turned down the chance to tour with KoRn- one of the world’s biggest bands for much of the 90’s- despite the personal friendships the band shared with KoRn and it’s members. “We did make a very conscious choice of who we were going to play shows with […] It was hard to be this young band and having to turn down tours. I can’t remember how many times I turned down KoRn! And they got pissed at us. Jonathan [Davis, KoRn frontman] would say, ‘Why do you hate us?’ and I didn’t know what to say. I’d tell him, ‘Dude, I don’t hate you. I love you, guys. You’re my friends. But I don’t want to tour with you. I don’t want to be on the ‘Family Values’ with you and Limp Bizkit’.

KoRn were the spearhead of the “nu-metal” genre, which for better or worse means that they still carry some weight today. Moreno saw the tag as a negative label however, and elaborated that “The name of the genre was nu metal, so anything that is new is one day going to be old. And I didn’t want to be old with it.”

Deftones guitarist Steph Carpenter also weighed in on the issue, criticising the compartmentalisation of music, rather than any of the band’s involved. “I remember when these subgenre names didn’t exist. It was just metal. So I don’t think we made a decision to step away from it — we’ve never paid attention to what anyone else was doing. We just did what we thought was right, and tried to make a killer album.”

Deftones recently had to cancel a tour date in Koln, Germany, due to Moreno taking a fall onstage in Paris, and breaking his foot, as you can see in the video below. Miraculously, the singer was able to continue and finish the set, and after the cancellation in Germany, looks set to finish the tour.