Chino Moreno and Shaun Lopez of ††† (Crosses) Talk Friendship, Music and Memories

For any music lover, the friends who introduce you to music become as much a part of your personal story as the music itself. Chino Moreno and Shaun Lopez have shared that kind of relationship since they first met in their hometown of Sacramento, California at a critical juncture in their adolescence. At the time, their respective bands Deftones and Far were still in their fledgling stages, but a deep, enduring bond was forged between the two bands that persists to this day. Lopez and Moreno in particular shared a love for new wave and synth pop that immediately distinguished both bands from their eventual nu-metal peers. They’ve turned each other onto countless musical influences ever since.

In 2011—two decades into their friendship—Moreno and Lopez finally got around to channeling those influences into the haunting, dark wave- and goth-influenced sound of their project Crosses, which they initially founded with now-departed co-founder Chuck Doom. Crosses released three EPs (ultimately re-packaged as a full-length) and then basically disappeared for the better part of a decade until December ‘22, when they released an EP titled PERMANENT.RADIANT. Earlier this year, the trio-turned-duo returned with something of a surprise full-length titled Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete.

When Crosses first formed, the project’s visual and sonic presentation fell right in line with the sensibilities of the Tumblr era. A lot has changed since then. But, though Goodnight, God Bless betrays a more mature, emotionally-weathered outlook, the casual ease of their friendship remains at the heart of their music. Moreno and Lopez spoke to Paste around the time of the album’s release. This conversation has been edited for clarity.

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Paste: You guys basically met as kids, when the Deftones and Far practiced in adjacent rehearsal spaces. How has turning each other on to music been a part of your friendship?

Chino Moreno: Well, that still goes today. We’re constantly [doing that]. If one of us gets excited about something, we’re eager to share it. And it’s always been like that. I specifically remember Shaun turning me on to Sunny Day Real Estate, for example, when we were younger. And it happened with electronic music. We got super into early trip-hoppy programming and cutting up beats young. That was something we bonded over back in the day. There’s always been something that one of us has introduced to the other.

So you basically turned that into a band.

Moreno: Yeah, kind of. I mean, we did talk about it in the late ‘90s. We were both listening to things at the time, like “We should try to do something like this.” Shaun was also one of my first friends to purchase an Akai MPC [sampler] and start experimenting with it. At that point, I was like, “Wow, you figured out how to use this thing?” [Laughs.] That was the trigger for us to actually make something. Obviously, we didn’t get around to it until years later.

You each picked up on a love of new wave in each other’s playing before you’d even been introduced. How isolated did you feel being in these heavy bands as dudes who liked The Cure, Depeche Mode and Duran Duran?

Moreno: I don’t know. To me, it didn’t seem that weird. There was this place in Sacramento called The Cattle Club and they’d have Metal Mondays. We’d go to these shows all the time, and whenever we’d get on those bills, Far and Deftones would be the least [stereotypically heavy bands on those bills]. Far and Deftones both had riffs, but we didn’t approach things like “We gotta be straight-up metal,” even though we were of course influenced by metal. I feel like, during that time, things had started to kind of [open up]. I never felt out of place liking what I liked. I always felt very welcomed, even in high school. I hung out with the skater kids who listened to hip hop, the rocker kids and the goth kids. There were obviously different cliques, but it didn’t feel like it was so separated [along musical lines]. It wasn’t an uncomfortable thing at all. It felt pretty natural.

Shaun Lopez: For me, it was kind of the opposite. Nowadays, I feel like people will listen to, like, Slayer and at the same time they’ll like Kendrick Lamar or whatever. But back in the day it wasn’t really like that. You kinda just liked one style of music. “Oh, you like metal? Well, you can’t like new wave then.” I always felt like, “If I’m hanging around these people, I’ve got to talk about this kind of music, but if I’m hanging around these other people, I gotta talk about this other kind of music.” I love how, now, people who are into music just like whatever they like. As a kid, you were more likely to get judged if you didn’t agree with somebody else on whatever genre they were into.

Both of your careers are products of those barriers dissolving somewhat. And I feel like maybe it’s crate-diggers who we have to thank for that. I wonder if that wider open-ness didn’t filter out of hip hop somehow. What do you think?

Moreno: Yeah, but I would even date it before that. I remember when I first heard Kraftwerk. This was probably when I was in 6th grade. Everybody was pop-locking and breakdancing, but to me Kraftwerk sounded like the future. That’s what led me to Depeche Mode. They were both using the same kinds of drum machines, and it sounded similar, but Depeche Mode brought melody and romantic lyrics. And then you go from there into the crate-digger stuff with all the sampling. Shaun and I are maybe a year or two apart—Shaun’s slightly older than me—so I felt like I was right on the cusp of [this change]. In 6th grade, I was listening to Howard Jones and stuff like that, and nobody in my school listened to that. [Laughs.] I felt like, “Wow, I’m listening to this music that’s from another planet.” It just felt like another world away. So I felt like I was [on my own]. But right around that time, in the early ‘90s, it really started to open up, and people weren’t as judgmental as Shaun was saying. At least I didn’t feel the pressure myself.

Let’s fast-forward: what do you each bring out of the other that we don’t hear in your work with anyone else?

Moreno: I’ve been asked a few times, “How do you approach Crosses differently than your other projects?” The reality is: I don’t. Obviously, any time you work with different people, you react differently to different things. The one thing that I do notice with Shaun in particular—even up ‘til now—is that, as like-minded as we are on having the same influences and things like that, Shaun does push me creatively. Especially with my vocals. I love having that. No one else in Deftones was ever a singer or wrote lyrics or melodies. So I just do what I do—no one questions me. Shaun will challenge me, like “Yeah, that’s pretty cool, but how ‘bout you try this?” Or, if I’m working on harmonies, for example, having someone who can sing and has that knowledge is awesome. I really appreciate it, because the majority of what I do ends up being my first instinctual reaction to an idea, but Shaun definitely helps me refine the idea and take it two or three steps further than I would have gone if I hadn’t been challenged.

Lopez: I was thinking about this the other day. When you’re in a band with other people—and this goes throughout my whole life of making music—what you set out to make with whoever you’re making it with, most of the time it doesn’t end up being what you wanted it to be, or what you thought it was going to be. With Crosses, I feel like I’m 100% making the music that I want to make. I think Chino brings that out. Because, for the most part, I don’t feel like anything is off limits. With every other project I’ve ever done, I’ve always been like “Aww, man, I wish we could do such-and-such, but this person’s not that kind of singer, or this person’s not that kind of drummer.” With this, it’s limitless. And I really dig that.

It’s been almost 10 years since the first Crosses album, but it wasn’t even a year between the PERMANENT.RADIANT EP and Goodnight, God Bless. The EP was supposed to be the first taste of what was planned as the second Crosses album—just like what you guys did the first time around—but then the new album grew into its own thing. And they’re very different in tone and vibe. How did all of that unfold?

Moreno: It’s crazy you say that because, honestly, the majority of that EP and what ended up being the album was recorded—or written—over the same span of time. It wasn’t [entirely] different sessions. So it’s weird to think that they’re sort of perceived as different things. Those just happened to be the songs that were closer to being finished [last year], so we went with those six songs. Honestly, when we started working on the new record, we were still planning on just doing another EP, and then possibly another one after that. But we just kept going. We were working at [such a steady] rate that we just looked up at our chart one day and we were like, “Man, we should just make a full-length.” There’s something about when you have a mindset that you’re making an actual LP that just feels different than working on a small batch of songs.

Lopez: Yeah, some of the songs on the album are the oldest ideas. Now that it’s out, it’s crazy for me to look back and go, “Wow, we did all this.” Chino’s rate of output was higher than it’s ever been. And somehow it just [coalesced into] this album that flows really nicely.

Chino—about 10 years ago, you were active with Crosses, Deftones and your other project Palms at the same time. Up until that point, you would work in fits and starts and sometimes get stuck. That was big in the headlines when the Deftones released Saturday Night Wrist in 2006.

Moreno: Yeah.

How have things been since then in terms of keeping up your creative output?

Moreno: It’s hard to really give a definitive answer as to why, but the time you referenced was just a very inspired, prolific period in my life. It wasn’t anything that was planned. That was just the life I was living: I was hanging out with Aaron Harris from ISIS and we were hiking every day and talking about music; Deftones were working on-and-off year-round like always; and the Crosses thing was happening. So it just felt good. Once you start accomplishing things and knocking things out, you start to get hungry for the next thing. I wouldn’t say things have completely died down since then, but when I moved up to Oregon my musical output slowed down a lot. I was up in the mountains snowboarding every day. It was fun and great, but music became less of a priority. I definitely haven’t gotten back to what it was like during the Saturday Night Wrist days, though, where I was just stuck. And I do notice I’m more prolific when I’m in L.A., because I’m just around more musician friends and doing musician things.

But Shaun, didn’t you go up to Chino’s place in Oregon to work on these songs?

Moreno: In the beginning.

Lopez: Yeah, that’s what started it. My wife and I had gone up there, but not to work on music. We were just going up there to visit. Chino and I don’t really have any serious hobbies outside of music, so we just ended up in his little studio. One thing led to another, and I think that’s where the song “Runner” started. We were like, “Oh, this is pretty cool.” I think I had one other trip up there where we worked on some more stuff. [Gradually,] over the course of those couple of years, it started to get more serious. Obviously, we ended up linking up with Warner, which was part of it too: being held accountable from a label and management. Like, “here’s your deadlines.” To me, that’s such a good thing. I see so many of my musician friends who, if they don’t have a deadline or anyone to answer to, they’ll just work on things forever and they’ll never put anything out.

But a lot of this music did come from you guys being in the same room.

Moreno: Yeah. Once we decided to [pursue] the ideas we’d started in Oregon, I started to come down to Los Angeles about once a month. We’d usually spend like a week at Shaun’s place. Shaun’s got an awesome studio with tons of gear. There’s stuff you can go and put your hands on, whether it be a synth or drum machine or whatever. So instead of finishing up the ideas we’d started before, we’d just sit there like kids in a toy store just playing with everything and experimenting. Our chart that I mentioned earlier started to grow and grow with ideas. So yeah, the majority of this was definitely created with us in the same room, with that instant back-and-forth. Shaun would play a chord progression, for example, and I’d be like “That’s rad. Lemme go in the vocal booth and put a little idea over that. Okay, cool, that’s a section now, so let’s write a chorus for it.” And so Shaun would go to the piano and come up with different chords or start messing with the drum machine. For me, that’s one of the most fun ways to make music. Very little of this record was done with us sending files back and forth.

Some of the songs on the album sound more obviously like they started out as chord progressions in the traditional sense, but how many of them were built out of “beats” or atmospheres—or even just an initial sound patch?

Lopez: I would say it was easily half the songs. We’re both so into unique sounds. And I’m just such a sucker for [certain sounds] where, as soon as you hear something, it’s like “Oh, I’m in!” There are songs I’ll hear [as a listener] where I know I’m in after the first five seconds. It could start out with like an 808 kick drum that’s just bangin’ and I don’t even care what happens after that. We’re both like that. A lot of times, with Chino, he’ll hear something as [skeletal] as a drum machine pattern that’s a little crunchy and distorted and he’ll just go into the vocal booth and start laying stuff down. That happens a lot when we’re together.

I would say that what you both do with Crosses is as much a kind of sculpture as it is songwriting.

Lopez: Yeah.

You guys are almost like architects messing around with blueprints and how different elements can be built on top of one another.

Moreno: Yeah. I mean, we never really go into this like, “We need to make a song.” Honestly, it’s just [a matter of] the first two things that stick together. There’ll be one [idea], and if I have a vocal melody that goes with it, then—boom—that’s a song already. We obviously know that we’re going to need a structure—chorus, bridge and more parts—but, as long as there’s a little seed of an idea, [we’re off and running]. For instance, the track “Pleasure” was originally titled “Peak” because Shaun started it on this sequencer thing. Is that what it is, Shaun—a sequencer?

Lopez: It’s a Peak synth. I’d just gotten it and plugged it in. That was literally the first sound I made on it.

Moreno: And it didn’t even change chords or notes. It was just one [pulse] of arpeggiating bass synth—just one thing—and I was like, “I love that.” There was something about it that I just gravitated towards. I was like, “That’s a song!” And it wasn’t a song—it was literally just a sound—but I was like, “Okay, what if we shift the note at this point to go up to this other note?” Then I threw a little vocal idea over it, and it went up on the chart as a song, even though it wasn’t a song yet. But I already saw what it could become. When I made a rough track sequence for the album, that one wasn’t anywhere close to being finished, but I was like, “I would love to start the record with this.” That kind of put Shaun under pressure, like, “Okay, we need a chorus.” He went over to the Rhodes and came up with the progression that would eventually become the chorus. The beat was one of the last things he added, and that brought it all together. It’s weird that we trust each other enough to even think that was going to turn out [okay], but I just kinda felt it. I knew the seed of the idea was inspiring enough to make us make sure that we prioritized it and [fleshed it out].

When Crosses first emerged, there were immediate comparisons to the witch house genre. You’re not a witch house act, but it did seem like you were intentionally referencing that aesthetic. Almost a decade has passed since then. Many electronic trends have come and gone. How much do you guys keep up with advances in the world of underground electronic music?

Lopez: I’m always trying to find new music and sub-genres. When you make music for so long, [it’s a matter of] trying to find something inspiring. I want to make something that gives me the feeling that [inspiring music] gave me when I first heard it. So I’m always trying to stay up on things. And I love when people send me music, like “Oh, you gotta check this out.”

Moreno: We definitely listen to contemporary electronic music. We also love all these older sounds we grew up with, but we’re not trying to be a retro act either. Just because we’re inspired by ‘80s music doesn’t mean we’re trying to make an ‘80s-sounding record. We’re very in-tune with contemporary sounds, and we always make an effort to offset [our influences]. That’s just naturally what we do, even outside of this project. I feel like I do that with Deftones and the other things I do. And that’s something we’re both very [keen on], like “How can we offset the fact that we’re using a Prophet or a Juno?” We love some of those sounds—they’re inspiring—but [the question is] “How can we best bring them into the present?”

How much do you guys keep up with new records by these classic synth bands you both love like Depeche Mode?

Moreno: I would say just as much as any music. Shaun is one of my most curious friends when it comes to music. Recently, I was over at his place working and I noticed Depeche Mode had played on one of the late night shows, so we put it up in the studio. We were nerding-out, like “What keyboard is Martin [Gore] playing?” And “We heard he was over at this synth shop—I wonder what keyboard he was buying!” That kind of thing.

Robert Smith makes a guest appearance on the album. Chino—it’s well documented how big of a Cure fan you are. How much new perspective did working with him give you?

Moreno: If you listen to The Cure from the late ‘70s when they first started, their sound has gone through so many stages. Robert can do a lot of different things—musically, and with his voice as well—so it wasn’t like, “Oh, I didn’t know this about Robert until I worked with him.” I feel like I’ve always [been aware of his range]. With the song that we worked on, “Girls Float † Boys Cry,” it wasn’t so much the music itself that made me want to have him on there. I feel like there are little nods to The Cure within the song, but that wasn’t it. For me, that was one of the saddest songs in this whole batch. It was maybe a little over two years ago when that musical bed for that was first created, and… I don’t want to say I wasn’t in a good place, but I was just sad. Everything I say in that song is exactly the way I was feeling. And then it had kind of been put on the back burner. When we brought it back out, I had to complete the lyrics and go in and actually sing the song. I wasn’t in the same place—thankfully—but it was such a snapshot of that time that I was able to dive-in to that moment for a minute and remember what I was feeling. One of my favorite things about Robert Smith is his ability to to really convey the sadness within a song. I just so happen to lean a lot towards the more melancholy Cure stuff, and the sadder Cure songs are some of my favorites. So I thought, “If I can get Robert, this would be the perfect song to have him take part in.” Luckily, he obliged. I already had the lyrics when I sent him the song, and he texted me back, “I would love to do this.” I was like, “Whoa!” Even at that time, it didn’t sink in. I’d talked to him over the years about working together on something but, you know, I wasn’t sure it was ever going to really happen—not until he sent the vocal back with his voice singing these words that I wrote. That’s when it really hit me, like “Wow, this is something I wouldn’t have believed if you’d told me 20 years ago.”

Shaun—What would you say El-P brought to the table with his feature on the song “Big Youth”?

Lopez: Once we’d finished that track and Chino had laid down his vocals, we had the idea of getting somebody to do 16 bars on it—like a rap thing. Chino had mentioned El-P and I was listening to RTJ4 nonstop. It’s one of those albums that kept me inspired in a very dark time right in the midst of the pandemic. So I grabbed an acapella sample of his voice and just put it in there as a placeholder. To go from that to him actually being on the album, it was surreal in the same way as it was with Robert Smith.

El-P’s appearance is like throwing a lit stick of dynamite in the middle of that song.

Lopez: Yeah! I mean, I still hear that part of that song and it just gets me so hyped, man. It’s crazy.

Shaun—Chino’s lyrics are often emotionally ambiguous. What are you hearing in the lyrics on this new record? What vibe do they give you?

Lopez: Lyrically—and even melodically—it sounds like somebody who’s gone through some darkness, but they kinda made it out and it’s like, “everything’s gonna be cool.” It sounds like someone who’s lived through it, and they’re inspired. I love that, and I love that his lyrics are ambiguous. Everyone can kind of make their own version of what they mean. Two different people can have two totally different stories about why they relate to the same song.

What feelings does it stir up for each of you when you go back to your hometown of Sacramento?

Lopez: I’ve never enjoyed visiting Sacramento more than I do now. Every time I drive by the place where I used to live once I moved out of my parents’ house, I get tons of memories—great memories. When I first moved away, it was like “I gotta get out of here.” But now I just love visiting that place.

Moreno: For me, it’s very similar. When I got out of there, I think I needed to get out of there. But I still have a lot of friends and family there, obviously. And like Shaun was saying, you drive by places and you’re reminded of your coming-of-age times. I lived there most of my life, so I have so many memories, good and bad. But even with the bad ones, I’m able to go back and appreciate all of it. It’s just all life experience. For us as musicians, I feel like we were really lucky. There was a great music scene there. It was a great way to come up, where you could be yourself and experiment making music. You weren’t under such a microscope. You didn’t have to come out of the box being great. You were able to develop. And everybody was very supportive. It was a really freeing experience being able to make music there. So there will always be a lot of great memories connected to that place for me.

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Saby Reyes-Kulkarni is a longtime contributor at Paste. He believes that a music journalist’s job is to guide readers to their own impressions of the music, but he shares more personal takes on his YouTube channel and Substack. You can also find him on Twitter.