After the original gig (and a few others) was postponed due to Chino's voice dying on him, it's good to see them reschedule a mere three weeks after the original date. Countless bands would cancel outright.

But first, we have to get through The Zico Chain…

Sure, they're energetic when they start, but their set turns into a half-hour long generic punk noodle, to the point it was very easy to be distracted by the guy trying to find his mates by hollering into his mobile and waving his arms about.

But the real story is what a petulant little child their frontman was. If he wasn't ranting about the crowd being full of "posh kids", he was bragging about them "headlining [insert name of some insignificant shithole here] while you were still in diapers", or spitting on members of the crowd. The idea of being a support act is to gain new fans, not make sure you have less of them by the time you've finished. Normally I'd say it was unfair that the support band gets a lesser reaction than when the PA plays Ring of Fire between bands, but in this case…

Naturally, by the time Chino et al hit the stage, the crowd are at fever pitch (nothing to do with the build up to their arrival onstage…), and when they start with Korea the place goes suitably mental. How to top that? Follow that up with My Own Summer, of course!

As opposed to the previous couple of times I've caught them at arena gigs, playing a club actually helps their sound with the more intimate songs, such as Digital Bath, Knife Prty, and Hole in the Earth which you won't get in an arena, while Passenger sounds truly epic, even without Maynard James Keenan. It also means they can flex their muscles when they want to, causing mayhem with the likes of Around the Fur and Be Quiet and Drive. Compared to a lot of the so-called "nu-metal" bands, this is why Deftones get a lot more love from their audiences, because they aren't a long trawl of one loud, heavy song after another – and it allows the crowd a well-earned breather. After all, you need it before they play Back to School, Engine No.9 or Bored (although strangely Mein doesn't get a massive reaction – does Saturday Night Wrist stick in anybody's mind like the previous albums?!?). An encore including Change (in the House of Flies) and a straight 7 Words (without a cover version midway through the song this time) wraps things up, although the complete lack of anything from the Deftones album – Minerva or otherwise – was a bit of a gap in the set that was notable after a while.

However, as per, Chino is the perfect host of an evening of high carnage and low mellow bits, diving into the crowd mid-chorus and keeping up the chatter from start to finish, always seeming to be happy that people cheer despite knowing they probably would. I repeat the question: is there a better frontman than Chino Moreno?

Yup:






Only joking, of course...I meant him:




But I do like Deftones a lot and it's just a pity that they were wrongly lumped in with the nu-metal squad. They're about as far removed from all that Linkin Park/Bizkit/Slipknot tripe as Rachmaninov is from Ludovico Einaudi.

I played 'RX Queen' to a stoned Yorkshireman in a badly publicised rave in the middle of a field in France, he loved it.