Victoria Park had fully committed to its new identity as London’s answer to a Nevada desert, and Deftones turned that scorched dust bowl into the biggest UK headline show of their career…
Words by Felix Bartlett | August 24, 2026
By the time the sun finally dipped behind Victoria Park, the whole site had spent a full day baking under it, every step kicking up another cloud of dust, every face some shade of pink. It was into that dust bowl, cooling but still glowing at the edges, that Deftones walked out to the sound of a saxophone getting louder and louder: a joke lost on anyone who isn’t part of the TikTok generation, but a tantalising bit of tongue-in-cheek humour that set the mood straight away and one that shows just how cross generational this lot have become!
Chino Moreno eased in rather than exploded, but it didn’t take long before something clicked and he seemed to shed twenty years on the spot, pacing the stage like he owned every inch of it. At one point he just stopped, took in a field stretching further back than the eye could follow, and let out a disbelieving “Holy shit!” before diving straight back into the noise. It’s the kind of moment that only lands when it’s real.
The setlist itself was a bold bit of sequencing. Openers Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away) and Around The Fur landed back to back, two of the band’s most iconic tracks fired off before the set was even ten minutes old. On paper, that’s the kind of call that can backfire badly: burn your biggest guns too early and watch the crowd start drifting toward the exits long before the encore even arrives. Tonight, nobody budged. If anything, the pace only dragged people further in, and by the time things wound down into the more sprawling, atmospheric material later on, that same field was still rammed edge to edge, nobody willing to leave before the very last note.
If anything, that opening one-two just set the tone for a first third that barely let up: My Mind Is A Mountain, Feiticeira and Swerve City kept the pace relentless, with only Mascara easing the throttle off before the surge continued. Then the whole thing dropped into something far more widescreen, opening with Risk before a genuinely towering pairing of Rosemary and Tempest, all played out against footage of horror films and crashing waves that made the back half feel less like a festival set and more like a late-night arthouse screening with a live score. Locked Club, Sextape and Infinite Source into Entombed kept the crowd locked in, but it was a rare pull from Saturday Night Wrist in Xerces that stood out as the real gift for the diehards packed up front.
Two White Pony cuts followed, Korea and a striking Change (In The House Of Flies), the latter played out under a rising sun backdrop that drew an audible reaction from the crowd. By the time a pounding pair of newer cuts closed out the main set, Milk Of The Madonna already sounding like a permanent fixture from here on out, the more meditative stretch had been well and truly shaken off, and that same field was still rammed edge to edge, nobody willing to leave before the very last note.
This set felt like something we haven’t seen in a long time, metal headlining a stage this size and feeling like the biggest thing happening in London that day. You’d have to go back to Bring Me The Horizon curating their own day at All Points East in May 2019 to find a moment this significant for the genre on this stage. It would seem that metal isn’t sneaking back into the mainstream anymore. It’s just there.
Credit to Outbreak too. There was more red tape than you’d get at one of their scrappier shows (here’s looking at you, Count Your Blessings | Repented), but even with the corporate polish, it still hit like an Outbreak show. Just in front of 50,000 people instead of 500.
As we trickled back into the underground, covered head to toe in dust, one thing was clear: this was only round one. Round two comes soon enough, Deftones and AFI both back on the bill when we touch down in Paris for Rock En Seine. Until then, please Outbreak, don’t let this be the last time ey?
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