That is unless you’re under 30, in which case you might be familiar with them.  A month ago, I wasn’t. That was when I was offered a free ticket to catch this band, The Warning, at The Warsaw, a concert club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Since I had my own rehearsal that evening I couldn’t accept the generous offer but after rehearsal, I looked up what I’d missed.

I’m more accustomed to discovering new music and contemporary artists coming from across the oceans. I didn’t expect to find it just south of our border in Monterrey, Mexico and not from three very young and talented sisters. Holy Schnikes! Suffice to say, they were the most powerful rock trio I’d heard since Muse, and these ladies give up nothing to them, especially with their writing.

“Evolve” was the first song I heard from The Warning. This video is from the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. It grabbed me instantly because the intro is in 7/4 and I love odd meters.  Pop songs that venture outside 4/4  need to be really “hooky” to sell to a  pop-centric public programmed for foot tapping on 2 and 4. An example would be “Money” by Pink Floyd. The Warning accomplished that. The song also reveals that they’re pretty good story tellers, lyrically speaking. I love a couple of lines in this song about female empowerment:

I’m not in danger,
I’m the danger now.

As a general notice to a stagnant and largely retro hard rock community, she’s right. You’ve been served, boyos. A line from another one of their songs that sticks in my craw is “wearing tears like jewelry“. Great line, but there are many of them, including the song title “Hell You Call a Dream“. They’ve obviously got no problem composing in a second language. They are, to leverage a cliche, the total package.

I’ve always preferred live to studio recordings. Three of my Top 5 desert island disks are live, all from the old Fillmore East. Watching a band live negates the Milli Vanilli Effect. The Warning has the usual assortment of slick, over-produced music videos and they’re good if you like that sort of thing. But their live videos are so much better because not only does whoever does their live sound deserve a standing O of his own, they’re also natural stage performers. It’s a rare act these days that commands a stage like these ladies and I can think of none who do it better. Even iconic bands like Green Day can’t hold a candle to their infectious stage energy.

Accordingly, this is my favorite video from The Warning: a 108-minute performance at the sold-out Pepsi Center in Mexico City this past summer. I can only find maybe five minutes in it that I’d consider cutting if I wanted a shorter video.

This level of stage presence can only come from spending years doing it. But Dani, Pau and Ale are only 24, 21 and 19 years old respectively and yet have a swagger that took even the Rolling Stones several years to develop. Spoiler: they’ve been performing live since they were 14, 11 and 9. Live playing is definitely their wheelhouse. You’ll find very few videos of The Warning where they’re not performing as a band, even in the traditional music video format. No slo-mo running down the beach or pouting after a breakup text. They leave their drama on the stage.

One performance that demonstrates this is their live remake (not copy) of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. I’ve heard at least a dozen tributes of this iconic song but The Warning took it apart, re-engineering it as a half-time ballad, only giving the original its due homage in the song’s outro. To be honest, I slightly prefer The Warning’s version to the original. Their skillful use of dynamics is worth praise of it own, orchestrated to suck you into the silence only to slap you in the face.

Who are these Ladies Villarreal Vélez? They’re Daniela (“Dani”) on guitar, Paulina (“Pau”) on drums and Alejandra (“Ale”) on bass. They have a colorful history that also managed to escape me on Youtube for a decade. I spend more time on Youtube than all other streaming platforms combined so how I missed them is a mystery.

The Warning’s 2014 video of “Enter Sandman” when the girls were mostly pre-teen went viral on Youtube. They found themselves invited to perform on “The Ellen Degeneres Show”, which kickstarted their professional career as an opening act for Foo Fighters, Sammy Hagar and the Circle, and Stone Temple Pilots. They’ve since gone on to open for Metallica, Muse and Guns ‘N Roses. Now they’re headliners and selling out thousand seaters, again managing to stay under my radar until recently.

Not satisfied with being just a copy band, they began writing their own material.They turned out to be outstanding pop composers as well. Among my favorites are “Sick”, “Evolve”, “Disciple”, “Automatic Sun”, “More”… hell, there’s far more “wow!” than “meh” in their song list.

So now you’ve heard of them too. Given their tireless international touring schedule, recordings, TV appearances and prolific use of social media you’re going to be hearing lots more from them.

Here’s a compact and curated Youtube playlist of The Warning for your listening consideration.