In 2008, Deftones were working on what was intended to be their sixth studio album when the band’s bassist Chi Cheng and his sister were tragically involved in a car accident that left Cheng in a coma. The record, titled “Eros,” was officially shelved the following year and Deftones began working on a different album – 2010’s “Diamond Eyes” – with new bassist Sergio Vega.
At this point, the only fully mixed and mastered song from the “Eros” recording sessions to have surfaced is the track “Smile,” which frontman Chino Moreno uploaded to YouTube in 2014 to mark the one year anniversary of Cheng’s passing. However, the song was quickly deleted by Deftone’s record label.
Now, in a new Q&A session with fans published by The Guardian, Moreno has addressed whether or not “Eros” will ever be released.
“We’re always asked about ‘Eros.’ It will most likely never see the light of day,” he said. “That would involve going back to that period and resurrecting unfinished things, and somehow bringing them to completion. ‘Dallas’ is the only song that was anywhere near finished.”
He continued, referencing Deftone’s newest album “Private Music”: “This new album started with ideas we’d been working on alone, through the pandemic. And when we got together to actually start making the record, none of us wanted to look back at those ideas from the pandemic – we wanted to capture the moment we’re in today. So going back to try to capture what was happening back during ‘Eros,’ and finishing those ideas, doesn’t really make sense.”
This falls in line with Moreno’s previous comments about the unfinished record, with the frontman telling Uproxx in 2022 that “to open up those files” would be too “emotionally heavy” because “it’s the last thing that Chi played on.”
For fans, the story of Eros has become one of the great “lost albums” in modern rock. Recorded in 2008 with producer Terry Date, the same man behind Deftones’ landmark early records, the sessions were described at the time as darker and more experimental than anything the band had done before. With Cheng’s accident in late 2008, however, the entire project took on a tragic weight. By 2009, the band made the difficult decision to shelve the material permanently and start fresh with Sergio Vega on bass. The result, Diamond Eyes, brought a new energy and remains one of the most celebrated albums of their career — but it also cemented Eros as a piece of Deftones history frozen in time.
Chino’s comments reinforce what longtime followers have suspected: that Eros is unlikely to ever be finished or formally released. The emotional burden of revisiting Cheng’s last recordings is something the band has openly struggled with. Moreno has said more than once that even opening the files is like reopening an old wound. For Deftones, moving forward with albums like Koi No Yokan, Ohms, and now Private Music has been a way of honoring Chi by continuing the band’s evolution rather than staying anchored to the past.
Still, the mystique around Eros hasn’t faded. Bootleg snippets, fan speculation, and the brief appearance of “Smile” on YouTube keep the album alive in the Deftones community. For many, it represents both the promise of what could have been and the pain of what was lost. While Moreno makes it clear that the project will likely remain unfinished, the legend of Eros ensures that Chi Cheng’s presence will always linger within the Deftones’ story.
