What Deftones fans are wearing

A frat boy in liberty spikes meets a goth girl in Temu

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a conversation with a young man in head-to-toe camo. He told me that he loved hunting ducks and that his favorite band was Deftones.

I was a little taken aback. This was not Bushwick camo. This was duck-hunting camo. And he used it for that! I knew that Deftones was big with people born in the 2000s, I’ve seen the meme poking fun at their young fans (erroneously featuring Miss Rayne Fisher-Quann) and when I went to the opening of the Heaven by Marc Jacobs store in London, the racks were filled with heat-pressed tees from a collaboration with the band.

But I didn’t know that boys who hunt ducks listen to Deftones.

So when he told me they were playing a show in Atlanta later that week, I decided to go. I felt that I would learn things from the crowd that I couldn’t at a show in a city like LA or New York — I wanted to understand the Deftones fans who hunt and go to suburban high school, not the ones who skateboard at LES or can catch a train into the city to see a gig.

I arrive at the State Farm Arena (capacity: 16,888) early, but later than planned. I wanted to talk to the kids camped out at the front of the queue, but the doors are already open and there’s a river of fans in all kinds of black clothing moving past me with alarming speed.

I join the line, hit bag check and then I’m inside. Almost immediately I bump into Jo-Elle, who looks incredible in her flared sleeves and red contacts. She tells me that “old rock” is her vibe for tonight — “Stevie Nicks with a vampire twist” (she watched Twilight last night).

My camera stopped working when I got to Atlanta, but luckily I have an iPhone

Her nails are decorated with a Union Jack, a cherry, a Playboy bunny and an inscription that reads I ♡ ME. Is she referencing the London designer Ashley Williams, who showed a similar print for fall 2024? Yes! I tell her that I wrote the show notes for that collection. She shrieks with delight. Sometimes what we see on our phones brings us closer together.

I spend the next hour or two bobbing around the arena, talking to a frat boy with liberty spikes, a girl in full Temu who works at a factory, the drummer of a famous metal band, a trio of cosplayers and a bunch of 15-year-olds.

Here they are,

Charles

Age: 19

Occupation: College student

Charles looks the most punk of anyone here tonight. His hair is styled into stiff liberty spikes at least six inches high and his eyes are rimmed in black. When I catch up to him, he and his girlfriend are holding paper bags of Chick-Fil-A.

Charles is wearing Old Navy pants, he needed something to go with his all-black outfit, and a Travis Scott shirt he got at a concert here last year. I ask if the spikes are his normal look. They’re not, he admits sheepishly.

“I'd say I'm pretty mainstream. This might be a facade. You could say I’m like a frat guy kinda… You could say I'm in a fraternity.”

“But I feel like I'm not trying to appropriate anything though. I'm just having fun with it.”

I believe him.

Sarah and Lydia

Age: 15 and 14

Occupation: High school

This isn’t Sarah’s or Lydia’s first concert, but they’re excited when I tell them I’ve met other kids their age who are at their first show tonight. “Do you know if they’re standing? That would be kind of crazy!”

Sarah got into Deftones through her dad, who’s into heavy metal. “I really enjoyed listening to them, it just brought me to a comfortable place.”

Lydia says she gets most of her style inspiration from Pinterest. “I love Pinterest, because it feeds you what you look at, what you like. So you don't even have to have an influencer that you really adore or whatever. I don't know, I just love pictures.”

“It’s not about just looking at one person and being like, oh, I want to replicate that, you know. Like, that's their style.”

Are there other kids at school who are into the ‘90s like them? “I mean, at school not a lot of people listen to this kind of music, but I really don't care, it’s whatever,” Sarah says with a laugh.

Braeden

Age: 23

Occupation: Factory girl

Braeden has the sweetest Georgia accent. I tell her I like it as she describes her look for the concert: “I was going for like, goth, club kid, rocker-ish.”

“And obviously you can never have too many accessories. So the rings, the belts, the hat, everything. I just kind of wanted to give ‘90s grunge.”

She tells me it’s all from Temu and I feel like I’ve just learned something new about the world.

Brann

Age: 49

Occupation: Drummer in Mastodon

I go into the concert knowing that I want to talk to some oldheads, people in their 40s and 50s who were part of the band’s original fanbase in the ‘90s. Gen X. So when I see a man who looks around that age with gauges and a sleeve of classic tattoos, I approach him with the confidence of Emily Oberg outside of a Supreme store in 2015.

He tells me that he’s been a Deftones fan since the mid ‘90s, when their album Around the Fur came out. I notice that every few seconds a new man with tattoos and piercings says hi to him, so I make a joke that he’s famous.

I ask if he has any thoughts on why the band has become so popular with people in their teens and 20s, over 30 years after they came on the scene. He’s not really sure, but he’s noticed it too. “I think there has been an overall re-interest in nu-metal which they were sort of involved in, but not involved in. They were lumped in, maybe a little bit unfairly with that genre back in the day. My band has toured with them. We toured with them and Alice in Chains in 2010. We've been friends for over 20 years.”

“What’s your band called?”

“Mastodon.” I’ve heard of them.

I ask if he thinks rock is making a comeback. I even say the words indie sleaze.

“It'd be good for me, it would help us. But I don't think it really went anywhere.”

“I'm told that it went somewhere, and it's not popular, but I feel like the whole time, you'll see rock bands filling up arenas all over the world. These massive festivals in Europe that we play to 100,000 people, to my knowledge it’s all rock and metal bands playing. So that seems popular.”

I don’t take his picture, but you can Google him.

Ky and Dylan

Age: 15

Occupation: High school

My exchange with Ky and Dylan is brief, so I’ve printed our conversation in its entirety:

Biz: How'd you guys get into Deftones?

Ky: My friends got me into it. They were listening to it in the car.

Biz: Same for you?

Dylan: My dad.

Biz: Was he a fan from like, the ‘90s?

Dylan: Yeah.

Biz: What's your favorite Deftones song?

Ky: Entombed.

Dylan: I don’t really have a favorite.

Biz: Are you guys from Atlanta? Is Deftones big here, do people at your school listen to it?

Ky: I’d say a good bit.

Lia

Age: 19

Occupation: Work

Lia is from near Helen, Georgia, a small town in the Appalachian mountains that was designed to look like a Bavarian village. It has several water slides and you can rent a tube to float down the Chattahoochee in. I compliment her makeup and she says it’s super simple, she did it at work.

Alexander

Age: 18

Occupation: Not in school at the moment

“Are you a big Deftones fan?”

“I’d say probably a 6/10.”

Domi, Annalise and Ravyn

Age: 23

Occupation: Eating it up all the time

Domi, Annalise and Ravyn met on Instagram. I think probably because they’re all into a specific sexy kind of alternative style — tonight they’re done up to the nines in corsets, minimini skirts, leg warmers and full e-girl glam.

I ask if this is their day-to-day look. “Yeahhh,” Domi says. “We eat it up all the time.”

They’d planned to get ready together, but they live in different towns. “You know, girls take forever to do everything.”

Domi wanted her look for the show “to give sexy bimbo, but like, could be a vampire, could be a succubus. You never know. She's just hot. She's just cunt.”

She and Annalise went for a matching leopard theme, while Ravyn was going for a clown look, before security made her rub her facepaint off. “Love that this is on the record,” she drolls.

“It was just a smile face and triangles. I didn't have a white base on or anything like that. But now it's giving red.” She points to the rusty smudges around her mouth. “And I love that. I also have my great grandmother's ring. It's actually her silverware that was made into a ring. It's like 80 years old.”

A group of boys in khakis and t-shirts shuffles up to us. “Can we take a picture?” one asks, eyes towards the ground.

“In a second, we’re doing something,” I say, shooing them away. I think maybe I should’ve let the girls answer for themselves, but when I ask if they wanted to take a picture with those boys the answer is fuck no!

“Yeah, so they can jack off to it later…”

“Deftones is a girl band.”

“This is girly pop music!”

Charleston and Lucas

Age: 18 and 14

Occupation: High school

Charleston and Lucas drove here from the coast of South Carolina, four and a half hours. Charleston’s been listening to Deftones since he was 7, when his dad played him their music. His dad bought a ticket for the show tonight, but he didn’t end up coming. “It was gonna be me and him, but he's old and he just couldn't stand the noise.”

Walker

Age: 23

Occupation: Pilot

Walker’s little sister put him on to Deftones 5 or 6 years ago. Can he describe what he’s wearing tonight for me?

“I was working on my car today and came over here.”

Ever

Age: 23

Occupation: Old soul

I ask Ever if he’s into this whole scene, the ‘90s rock thing. He is, and a lot of his friends say he’s an old soul because of it. “They just don't get it. It’s just not their cup of tea, I guess. But it's pretty neat. It's different, you know.”

Kayla and Ashley

Age: 21

Occupation: College seniors

Kayla found Deftones on Spotify her junior year of high school. Now she’s a huge fan. “I literally thought about the concert in my sleep, like all night.”

Ashley’s newer to Deftones. She calls herself a “TikTok fan,” because she first heard their music on TikTok around a year ago.

I ask what the alternative scene in Atlanta is like. Is it growing? “I think so, yeah. I think it's growing everywhere,” Kayla tells me. “Honestly, because of TikTok. Everything blows up on TikTok. And then it just blows up all around the country.”

Charlotte’s first concert was a Clairo show in 2021. Most of her outfit tonight is from Spirit Halloween.

Logan, Lauren, Trinity, Annaliese and Roxy

Age: 16, 18, 15, 17 and 17

Occupation: High school

I find this group by the soda machine, a little before the show starts. Lauren did a school of rock thing six years ago and after started playing Deftones with her friends on stage. This is Trinity’s first concert and she called her sister in a panic for outfit advice earlier.

They tell me what they’re wearing one by one.

I decide it’s time for me to go in and find my seat, Deftones should be playing soon. I clop down the concrete steps and make my way through my row, which is already full.

The kid next to me introduces himself as the second opener wraps up. He’s here alone too. He tells me that he’s in the Navy, stationed down in Jacksonville and that he had to lie to his supervisor to come tonight — he said his kitten was sick and he had to take her to the vet.

This is not my friend from the Navy, but I lost my notes on this guy. I remember he builds doors for a living and his girlfriend did his hair

When Deftones comes on stage, the arena, which is mostly full, rises to its feet. Chino Moreno sounds amazing, his voice has none of the changes that come with aging. And I’m impressed by his athleticism. He stomps and runs across the stage droning like a angel at the end of time (the end of the twentieth century). His command reminds me a little of the LA megachurch pastor Chad Veach, who I saw preach last fall.

If anyone thinks it’s weird that the guy singing is old, they don’t tell me. I honestly barely notice it. I watched the Italian rock band Måneskin play for a huge crowd at the O2 a few years ago. They were so young and sexy that it felt like a parody, a commercial, of what rock and roll used to be (I enjoyed the show and went to the green room after with a bunch of girls in backless jumpsuits). There’s none of that here, but it doesn’t seem like the crowd’s missing it.

When I was the same age as the kids I met tonight I’d drive a couple hours to Atlanta to see rock shows. I had my first kiss at the Masquerade, a longtime alternative venue that Charles’s girlfriend brought up when we were talking. I was mostly seeing small but thrilling bands who were on Spin lists and maybe playing Letterman. It was so much fun, even more fun because the boys in the bands were just a few years older than me.

I think about how we’re supposed to be more obsessed with being young than ever before. 21-year-olds are getting Botox on their baby lines and little girls are buying retinol products in hot pink plastic. Their icons are old, or they were just born. Charli XCX was 31 when she had her breakthrough, Billie Eilish was 14. Old starlets and pop stars are stuck in amber, forever young in Getty Images shot outside of clubs and coffee shops. Iconic, iconic, iconic.

Is it sad that our best rock stars are old now? That if you want to feel it to something young and really famous you don’t have a lot of options. Of course there are smaller bands, indie acts. There’s Bar Italia and Fontaines D.C. They’re both 30. And there will always be kids who want to get together in a room and play the drums and guitar.

I went on the New Models podcast the day of the Deftones show to talk about American Style and how culture is transmitted today. The hosts Carly and Julian brought up the idea of the cinematic imaginary, which is best captured in the image of a teenager dressing up like the life they dream of (and probably saw in a movie) — a raver off a pill on a night that never ends, a grunge teen who’s sick of it all in 1995. How does that work today?

“If you're getting this aesthetic from Pinterest, are you wearing it with some kind of imaginary destination that the look will take you to? Or is it actually about the selfie video?”

At the Deftones show, I think I find the answer. It’s the selfie video, but it’s also right here.