Amid a tough year, getting to collaborate with one of her favorite artists was a clear 2020 highlight for Phantogram‘s Sarah Barthel.

The “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” duo is featured on Black Stallion, a remixed version of Deftones‘ beloved 2000 album, White Pony. As Barthel tells ABC Audio, she and band mate Josh Carter are big Deftones fans, and she’s “highly influenced” by frontman Chino Moreno‘s vocal style.

“His dissonance, his beauty, and just the heaviness, gives me just goosebumps to the max,” Barthel shares.

Barthel remembers her excitement when she first met Moreno backstage at a Smashing Pumpkins concert.

“I just was, like, ‘Hey, here’s my number, I love you, can I touch your shoulder, just so I can tell everyone back home?'” she recalls.

Moreno, turns out, was also a Phantogram fan, and he eventually reached out to them to be involved with the Black Stallion project. Carter produced the remix, and Barthel admits that she may have taken “way too long” recording her vocals, since she was having “so much fun harmonizing” with Moreno’s voice.

“I was, like, ‘This is so awesome! Oh my god I don’t want this to stop!'” she laughs. “I sent Josh maybe five hours worth of vocals and my idea around how I wanted it to sound. I loved what Josh did, I was so inspired by it.”

Suffice it to say, working on Black Stallion was a “big deal” for Phantogram.

“That’s a ‘Holy s***, check-off-the-list’ kind of thing for us,” Barthel says. 

Black Stallion, which also includes remixes by Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda and The Cure‘s Robert Smith, is out now.

Phantogram, meanwhile, released their new album Ceremony in March. You can also hear Barthel sing on the new ONR single “Must Stop.”

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

By Josh Johnson
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