“I’m surprised he’s not more of a meme,” is exactly what anyone would hate to hear from their own bandmate which is exactly what Deftones frontman Chino Moreno has said about his band’s guitarist Stephen Carpenter.
If you’re unaware, Carpenter gained notoriety late last year when he revealed his support for the flat Earth conspiracy theory while also disputing the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines during an appearance on the conspiracy theory podcast Tin Foil Hat with Sam Tripoli.
Now Moreno has offered his opinion on Carpenter’s views in an appearance on The Peer Pleasure Podcast. “I’m surprised he’s not more of a meme…I think there may be a couple,” he said before getting more serious. “But it was actually tough for a minute, because obviously I’ve been friends with him since I was 10-years-old. And you know he wasn’t always this way.”
Moreno said he thought that drug use might be involved in Carpenter’s views. “I will say that the weed probably has a ‘lil bit to do with his conspiracies and this and that and whatever, because he just, you know… And then probably sitting at home, just looking on whatever sites he looks at. (It) probably doesn’t help being smoked out and all that stuff and whatever.”
He revealed that the pair do still get on when they’re not discussing those matters. “When we’re together it’s like we don’t even talk about any of that stuff,” Moreno said. “We play music, we laugh, we have a blast playing music. [We’re] still friends the way we were when we were kids.
He added: “He’s really, really sincere… And he’s smart—which is crazy—he’s very loving. He’s probably one of the most generous people that I’ve ever known in my whole life.”
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In other Deftones news, the band recently postponed their U.S. tour until next year. They said it was due to “the imminence of the tour, and the pandemic lasting longer than we anticipated, we came to the realisation that uncertainty still remains in different markets throughout the country.”
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Check out Chino Moreno on The Peer Pleasure Podcast:
