In what has become an annual event on the weekend of Dia De Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, Dia De Los Deftones take over Petco Park Stadium in San Diego, CA, for a day of music and celebration. This was the sixth year the day-long festival has taken place, organized and headlined by Deftones, in partnership with Live Nation. This year was exceptionally anticipated due to the release of the band’s most recent and 10th full-length album, private music, released in August, their first record in five years. Hitting a milestone of ten albums is no small feat, and for a band of this caliber, their hour-and-a-half-long set truly reflected a career-spanning performance.

Every year, the festival boasts an eclectic lineup of artists, but this year truly made sure to boast performances across the full spectrum of genres, featuring acts by rappers Rico Nasty and 2Hollis, hip hop duo Clipse, black metal-gazers Deafheaven, Mexican singer/songwriter Regulo Carom, the rising genre-bending artist Ecca Vandal, and more. As you can tell, the bases were fully covered, which is why the event tends to turn out such a massive crowd. Well over 20,000 people flock to the event venue in downtown San Diego each year.

Fans began flocking to the stadium in the early afternoon on November 1, where two back-to-back stages were set up on the grounds. There was never a dull moment once you set foot through the gates until the final encore of the evening. However, for many fans, it ended up being a lot of running back and forth to ensure they made every set because shows were staged only five minutes between one another. Not to mention, nearly every performance was only allotted 30-minute time slots, so if you did plan on catching every set, you really had to be ready to book it from one stage to the other.

Only Clipse (one hour) and, of course, Deftones (one-and-a-half hours) were scheduled for longer set times than the rest of the performers of the day. Although with such an extensive discography, that last hour and a half of the night seemed to fly by, and if they had the bandwidth for it, Deftones would have been able to entertain a crowd for twice that.

The afternoon kicked off at 3:45 p.m. with openers University, traveling all the way from the U.K. for their set. Up-and-coming shoegazers Glare followed suit, easing the crowd into a low-vibration yet positive intention as the festival got underway. From that moment on, the rest of the afternoon was a whirlwind as crowds swept from the All Souls main stage to the secondary Calaveras Stage. Deafheaven put on an intoxicating performance with powerful metal riffs and George Clarke’s piercing screams. Shortly after, the sun began to set, and the lights of the stadium took over.

The majority of attendees didn’t hit max capacity until the sun went down; then it felt as if everyone swarmed the stands all at once. Petco Park is an ideal location for a concert of this caliber because the floor section covered almost the entirety of the stadium grounds, but the tiers of risers allowed fans to see the show from every possible angle, and no one was stuck with a bad view. Clipse took the stage to a packed stadium, the last set before the main event, and these two longstanding legends had the crowd amped, especially after the release of their latest acclaimed album, Let God Sort Em Out, released this year.  

After a brief intermission, it was finally time for the set we had all been waiting for. Deftones came up and immediately commanded the stage. The stage and event have become a homecoming for the band, with many attendees also making it an annual occasion. They opened with their new hit single from Private Music, “My Mind Is A Mountain,” and came to follow it up with several live debuts off the same album.

Throughout their set, they made sure to cover popular songs across every era over the past two decades, including records Ohms, Diamond Eyes, Saturday Night Wrist, White Pony, and Around the Fur. Their gorgeous visual accompaniment created a magical atmosphere in the stadium, ever emphasized by frontman Chino Moreno’s awe-inspiring vocals. The night came to a close with a finale of fireworks in the center of downtown San Diego, making it a beautiful end to a successful day of musical acts and initiating the countdown to next year.