For a minute there I thought I was Ashton Kutcher in The Butterfly Effect and had been transported back to November 2000, when I saw the Deftones / Incubus co-headlining tour down at the Hornets training center in Fort Mill, SC. But then I realized it was 9,000 degrees outside and I was nearly 15 years older!! Yikes! But jokes aside, this tour was killer back then and it rocked again here in 2015.
Incubus to me sort of stands out from that 2000 tour, but this time around the Deftones stole the show! Opening with fast paced “Be Quiet and Drive”, Chino and his band mates made it known immediately that they had brought their A-game to the Queen City! It was pretty cool seeing the first part of their set during daylight hours; although they did still manage to make good use of the LCD screens, playing plenty of multi-colored video illustrations that were congruent with their high octane performance.
Next up was “My Own Summer”, which just so happens to be my favorite Deftones tune so I found taking pictures to be rather difficult while head banging along with the crowd! The entire band, from guitarist Stef Carpenter to drummer Abe Cunningham and of course frontman Chino Moreno were super high energy from the start of their 16 song set to the very last note. Which was really impressive given how hot & muggy it was. They closed out the show with radio favorite “Change (In the House of Flies)” followed by two of the heavier Deftones tracks “Headup” and finally “Engine No. 9”!
