Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter has spoken out about the reported leak of the band’s lost 2008 album Eros, as well as demos from their ninth studio album Ohms. He addressed the situation in a conversation featured on The Dr. Greenthumb Show.
Carpenter weighed in on whether Eros had truly leaked and whether it had since been scraped from the internet, offering a candid take on the situation.
“I don’t know if it’s been scraped from the internet or not, and I don’t know to what extent it’s leaked, but every record of ours since ‘White Pony’ has leaked. It happens,” Carpenter said.
He went on to reflect on how leaked material spreads once it reaches the web, noting that the internet makes such leaks virtually unstoppable.
“Yeah, [the leaker is] somewhere in the chain. But I mean the reality is now people have the internet available and you can share stuff instantly. So once it gets on the web, yeah, it’s gone,” he continued. “They’ve been on YouTube though for a long time, that’s how I listen to them.”
Both Eros and the Ohms demos reportedly surfaced online before being quickly pulled down by the band. No further official statement from Deftones has been issued at this time.
The leak has reignited long-standing fan curiosity around Eros, an album that has existed in legend for nearly two decades — and one whose story is inseparable from tragedy.
Eros was shelved in 2008 after bassist and vocalist Chi Cheng suffered a severe car accident that left him paralyzed. Production on the record came to an indefinite halt. The band had been working on the album since 2007 with producer Terry Date, and in July 2009 they announced the project would be put aside. Cheng passed away in 2013, and the album has remained unreleased ever since.
The band has shown little indication that Eros will ever see an official release. Frontman Chino Moreno has stated that the tracks are unfinished rough drafts and that the album will most likely never see the light of day.
The reported leak is said to include 11 songs attributed to Eros, with working titles such as “Destiny,” “Brenda,” and “Melanie,” alongside demos from the Ohms sessions. The surfacing of the material has sparked debate among fans over whether listening to the leaked tracks is appropriate given the circumstances surrounding the album’s shelving.
Following Cheng’s accident, Deftones recruited Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega, who remained with the band until his departure in early 2021. The band released Ohms in 2020 to critical acclaim, making the emergence of demos from those sessions an additional point of interest for fans following the leak.
