You can hear the tension

THE rear of the bus is a place of peace for the Deftones at the moment. Band members wander in and out for a smoke or a pretzel and a few words about their new album, as “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” unfolds on a TV with the sound turned off. Bassist Chi Cheng cheerfully discusses the three-year struggle to complete “Saturday Night Wrist” and the dark days that nearly broke up the band.

The bus is parked behind the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, barely a block away from the Virgin Megastore, where the band is about to celebrate the new release with a performance amid the racks of CDs, books and T-shirts. But the Deftones almost never got here, suffering through another period of creative turmoil within the band and too many divorces at home.

“It’s a really onerous, painful process,” Cheng explains. “I wouldn’t say it’s a necessary evil, because I would like to not do it ever again, but it seems that kind of tension does make great music for us.”

The new album, the Deftones’ sixth (including a 2005 rarities collection), presents another dynamic collision of atmosphere and metal guitar as singer Chino Moreno soars and tumbles through the ether, fueled by wonder and alienation. It is a sound both agonized and wistful, the kind of contemplative shoe-gazing rock that occurs when you’re doubled over in agony.

Its epic, emotional landscape closely resembles that of 2000’s “White Pony,” the band’s most critically acclaimed and bestselling album, and a creative breakthrough that separated the Sacramento act as something far beyond that era’s lucrative but now-faded nu-metal movement.

Two years ago, the Deftones went into a studio with producer Bob Ezrin, famous for his work on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” among many high-profile rock albums. But four months into the process, recording sessions stalled at the very moment that most of the band was prepared to wrap things up. Moreno wasn’t ready at all. His lyrics and vocal melodies still needed work, he insisted, and he felt pressured by the band, by the record label, by his own expectations. Ezrin eventually left for other commitments, Moreno retreated to his Team Sleep side project, and then he began hearing rumors that the Deftones might go on without him.

“It was a tough time because making that decision tore us apart,” says Moreno, wearing black and looking up at the silent TV as he speaks. “They were all mad at me for leaving halfway through the record. I was really mad at them for not standing up and making the best record ever.”

That impasse turned out to be exactly what Moreno needed, a moment of pain and conflict to inspire him to write the song “Hole in the Earth,” a typically emotional eruption that confronted the rifts within the Deftones. The rest of the members were moved by the message, but mainly they were thrilled that he had written a song at all, the ultimate signal that the Deftones were alive and functional. It is now the opening track (and debut single) on “Saturday Night Wrist.”

“The song is kind of calling them out on our friendship,” Moreno says. “We’ve been friends for too long and been around each other for too long, so we’ve got to say what we’ve got to say.”

As he speaks, guitarist Stephen Carpenter steps into this rear compartment and lights a cigarette, opening up the bus windows. He is a bearded, burly man in a black T-shirt and baggy camouflage shorts known for his love of heavy metal. His big riffs are at the center of the Deftones’ sound, but he chooses to step beyond the boundaries of straight-ahead metal and play within dreamier textures, drifting beyond traditional metal and more toward Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead.

“I don’t want to have any musical boundaries of what we can or can’t do,” Carpenter says. “My natural tendency is to be pretty jaded and think it’s already all been done. I know damn well it hasn’t. Art is art -- you can form it any way you like.”

THE Deftones form theirs around those riffs and the eccentric, intense singing of Moreno, whose bursts of rage and emotional pain are equally agonized and melodic. At his best, he can seem utterly lost in the moment onstage, as far away from the world as he once was as a Sacramento teenager watching the night sky from his roof with headphones blaring Depeche Mode.

“The music itself makes me want to sing,” Moreno says. “It’s good when I can tune out everything else and I’m in another world. Sometimes it gets a little harder to get in that place. Just like everything else in life, it’s hard just to escape in music all the time, but when you can do it, it’s the most beautiful thing.”

The lyrics don’t always matter as much, fusing into wordless cries, shrieks and intense emotion. “It’s the sound of his voice that I really like,” Carpenter says. “I honestly don’t know all the lyrics to our songs. I’m listening to the melody. But when I have sat and read them, I really enjoy the way it works together. He’s without a doubt one of the most talented people I know.”

Less than an hour later, fans are flowing into the Virgin store in a rush to get beside the stage, streaming past merchandise newly covered by thick sheets of plastic, as if in preparation for a hurricane.

When Moreno, Carpenter, Cheng, drummer Abe Cunningham and DJ Frank Delgado step onto the small stage, the crowd surges forward again, raising their hands and fists and about 50 glowing camera-phones in their direction, ready for a session of beautiful noise and aggressive melody.

There will be some moshing and one crowd-surfer with a mustache, ignited at last by the sounds of the earned angst and unexpected ecstasy of the band in front of them.

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The Deftones

Where: Avalon Hollywood, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood.

When: 7:30 p.m. today and Friday

Price: $27

Info: (323) 462-8900