Soundwave was an annual music festival held in major cities around Australia, run and promoted by Soundwave Touring. The festival originated in Perth, Western Australia, and began travelling to the other Australian capital cities in 2007. It featured a number of international and Australian music acts from various genres, including rock, metal and punk. The festival has been headlined by Deftones, the Offspring, Incubus, Alice in Chains, Bloodhound Gang, Nine Inch Nails, Faith No More, Jimmy Eat World, Jane's Addiction, Soundgarden, Iron Maiden, Queens of the Stone Age, the Smashing Pumpkins, System of a Down, Slipknot, Green Day, Avenged Sevenfold, Linkin Park, Blink-182 and Metallica.

Deftones is an American alternative metal band formed in Sacramento, California in 1988. They were formed by frontman Chino Moreno, lead guitarist Stephen Carpenter and drummer Abe Cunningham, with bassist Chi Cheng and keyboardist and turntablist Frank Delgado joining the line-up in 1990 and 1999, respectively. The band's experimental nature has led some critics to describe them as "the Radiohead of metal".