Deftones played a 20-song set at Día de los Deftones at Petco Park on Saturday, Nov. 7, and mid-set they reached for a song most of the room had never heard live. After “Rocket Skates,” the Sacramento band played “Melanie,” a track from the unfinished Eros album. It was the first Deftones Melanie performance since 2008, and only the third time the song has ever been played onstage.
How Deftones Melanie Fits the Unfinished Eros Story
“Melanie” belonged to Eros, the album Deftones left unfinished in the fall of 2008 after a car accident put bassist and singer Chi Cheng in a coma. Cheng died in 2013. The band kept the record shelved, and, according to Theprp and Stereogum, had performed the song only twice before, both times in 2008.
After Saturday’s Deftones Melanie revival, frontman Chino Moreno told the crowd, “This song doesn’t exist,” Stereogum reported. Fan-filmed clips of the performance circulated online; SDMETAL is not embedding them here.
Theprp also noted that versions of Eros and demos from the later album Ohms leaked online in June 2026, and wrote that the song’s return “seems to be a noteworthy nod to that leak.” The band has not publicly tied the setlist choice to the leak, and that reading is Theprp’s observation, not a statement from Deftones. The rest of the set ran through familiar material, from “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” and “My Own Summer (Shove It)” to an encore of “Cherry Waves” and “Hexagram.” The full setlist is in Theprp’s report.
Stereogum listed the rest of Saturday’s bill as Converge, Lip Critic, The Neighbourhood, AFI, Bktherula, Jehnny Beth, Ladrones and LustSickPuppy. Attendance figures were not published in the reports reviewed for this story. For a San Diego festival built around the band’s own catalog, the Deftones Melanie surprise was the moment that set Saturday apart.
