Deftones Bassist Chi Cheng Emerging from Coma

After nearly 4 years of lying in a hospital bed, in a coma after a severe auto accident, Deftones bassist Chi Cheng is showing signs of responsiveness, and according to doctors, is making progress and emerging from an unconscious to a partially conscious state.

Video was released yesterday of Chi responding to a nurses request for him to raise his leg. Chi does so immediately which according to doctors is something he's never done since being in the coma. Hard-Rock-Reviews.com wishes  Chi and the Deftones family best wishes in the coming months, as he is definitely not out of the woods yet. To donate money to Chi and his family to help pay hospital bills, go to One Love for Chi's website.

Interview with Taproot bassist Phil Lipscomb

Fourteen years, 7 albums and hundreds of thousands of miles traveled on tour later, they are a band of many fortunes. Bad fortunes such as lineup changes and losing record labels. Good fortunes including touring with Deftones, Incubus, Mudvayne as well as having multiple Top 20 singles off of various albums.  Resilience is the name of the game when it comes to Taproot. Bassist Phil Lipscomb tells us a little about where he came from musically, and what sets Taproot and their fans apart.

Aaron Manogue: Where did you get your start with music?

Phil Lipscomb: Me personally, was with my brother. I got my first bass off of him and he had been playing guitar for years and I just got going from there, you know?

Manogue: You guys have been touring a lot in the past year or two.  What do you do to stay sane when you’re on the road for months at a time?

Lipscomb: Well, my dad was in the Air Force so I’ve moved around all my life and stuff, so you know, I really enjoy traveling. I love being on the road.  Two or three months is a long time to be on the road so by the end of the tour, you get that, “I need to be home and I need to be able to relax for a little bit,” feeling.  For the most part, we’re all friends, we’ve been friends for years and we get along pretty well.  So that helps tremendously, you know?

Chino Moreno of the Deftones Unveils Side Project

After releasing what many call the best album of 2010 with the Deftones, vocalist Chino Moreno recently spoke with AOL's Noisecreep about touring with the Deftones, their upcoming record release aptly named 'Covers,' an album comprised of covers the band has done over the years, and also a new eclectic side project.

"The guitarist from Far, Shaun [Lopez], he's been a good friend of mine since we were kids. He's my neighbor and we've done stuff together before. But just recently, during these little breaks that we've had, we've been recording this real minimal project where it's just me and him and another buddy of mine, Scott Chuck, and we're just writing these little pieces of music, whether it starts with piano or some down tempo beats. It's really minimal and soothing and it's sort of like the stuff I like listening to when I'm not screaming my head off. The tentative name for the project is Crosses and we have 16 tracks that are almost done. We'll usually work four or five hours a day. I'll go over to Shaun's and sing a bunch of stuff and we'll edit some stuff together. I'll just write lyrics really quickly and it'll be done," Moreno said."

As for any future plans to release an album or do any live shows, Moreno downplayed the hype already building around the project.

"We don't have any plans to play live, but we might release a series of EPs on our own on the Net. I don't want to talk about it at all -- which I'm doing right now. The main thing about it is, I don't want to hype it up and give people all these expectations. To me, that's what made Team Sleep so hard to do. It was supposed to be this underground thing that would happen whenever, and it developed so much hype around it that it kind of ruined the whole thing for me. Our idea for this is to just put it out there and whoever likes it, cool. I talked to the guitar player of Team Sleep, Todd [Wilkinson] the other day and we want to do the same thing – record music when we can and not have it be such a structured thing where you have to meet deadlines and tour. We just want to make music because we like to do it, just doing it ourselves and utilizing the Internet. That's the plan for those two things within the next year."

Read the full interview with Chino at Noisecreep