The Warning: “This is a testament to the influence of music and the connection it establishes with people, irrespective of their language”

The Warning’s fourth album, Keep Me Fed, was a huge success last year. Since then, they’ve been touring nonstop. The Villarreal Vélez sisters are poised for worldwide success as they prepare to compete in Latin America and Europe.

Following The Warning’s performance at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Manchester in November, the Villarreal Vélez sisters flew to Miami for the Latin GRAMMYs.

“That week, the way we lived it, it was just so crazy,” drummer Pau laughs now.

“Very chaotic,” explains bassist Ale.

“It was a lot,” says lead vocalist and guitarist Dany.

They were nominated for Best Push at the EMAs, which honours breakthrough acts. The band performed Automatic Sun, from their fourth album Keep Me Fed, drenched in crimson light and interrupted by bursts of fire.

Speaking to Kerrang! from their home base in Monterrey, Mexico, some months after the back-to-back concerts, the three sisters are animated, completing each other’s sentences or giving overlapping responses.

“It was just so hectic and full of adrenaline,” Pau exclaims. “I don’t think we’ll ever forget that whole week.”

At the Latin GRAMMYs, The Warning dressed in metallic clothes and played Qué Más Quieres, which was nominated for Best Rock Song, as strobe lights shone overhead. The band members are natural Spanish speakers who generally write and perform in English. They make it a point to include one Spanish tune on each album, which was nominated on Keep Me Fed.

“We toured a lot in North America, Europe, and even Asia,” Pau says of the previous year’s whirlwind. “But we hadn’t visited South America in a while, not even Mexico. So to be honoured in the Latin American society by our colleagues, particularly our rock’n’roll peers, and to be representing Mexican music, we feel really honoured.”

To call it a hectic period would be an understatement. After releasing Keep Me Fed last summer, The Warning’s popularity skyrocketed, putting them on worldwide platforms such as awards events, TV screens, and even New York’s famed Times Square. It’s especially amazing given that Dany, Pau, and Ale are only 25, 23, and 20 years old, respectively. And, as Pau explains, they’ve travelled so much that they’re familiar with some of their roadside stops.

“Touring North America, we know what it is, we’ve done it for a while,” Pau tells me. “We know our stops, Walmarts, and Targets. “We know where to go.”

“The only thing was the cold in Canada…” Ale adds.

The first phase of the tour included a journey across the United States, including festivals and headline gigs, followed by support positions in Canada with Halestorm and Evanescence, the former of which The Warning had previously played with. “It was just like reuniting with old friends,” Pau tells me.

By the time Kerrang! meets up with the three, they’re reaching the conclusion of a much-needed trip break before the entire machine goes back into gear.

“We’ve been here in Monterrey for a while, and again, we’re about to leave, but I feel that leaving and touring just makes me really appreciate my home, my city,” proclaims Pau.

At home, their celebrity is apparent and, simply, inevitable. It’s warning-mania.

“Every time we leave our house, we get asked for a picture or an autograph,” Pau tells me. “It doesn’t bother me since I’m aware of its presence. I am aware that this will happen when I go out, yet it still surprises me at times.”

One occasion, the drummer was approached by a fan at a restaurant when she was paying the bill.

“There’s the other part, where you assume people are coming to you because they recognise you and they want to tell you something,” Dany recounts.

“But then they ask, ‘Hey, is your car the grey one that’s parked behind?'” I’m like, “Oh!” “I got ahead of myself,” Pau says, laughing.

The band’s 2024 travels were only the beginning of the Keep Me Fed cycle; this year, they’ll continue to tour extensively across continents.

“We’re super-excited about getting this album to the places that haven’t heard it completely,” Dany tells me.

On the day we meet, they’re just a week away from some very massive home-country gigs, including three nights at Mexico City’s 10,000-person Auditorio Nacional. This tour, together with a special local event at the 8,000-seat Auditorio Citibanamex, has totally sold out. Not that it has sunk in yet.

“We’re going to be living these shows that we’ve been planning for a whole year,” Pau tells me. “It’s this weird anticipation and anxiety – we’ve been living with the concept for such a long time, rehearsing for them, planning them, working with so many people to make them happen, and now they’re going to happen!”

After Mexico, The Warning will tour South America in March before going to the UK and Europe in April, including a performance at London’s O2 Academy Brixton.

“We’re from the opposite side of the planet,” Pau continues, “so having more than a thousand people buy tickets to see us at each event in places we’ve only been once or twice is insane to us. It demonstrates the power of music and its ability to connect with people regardless of language or location.”

The Warning have extensive experience performing in both large and local venues. These days, they go between opening for the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Muse, to their own performances, changing as required, but always attempting to make it as memorable and enormous as possible.

“Production-wise, it’s like, ‘Will that fourth screen fit onstage? Probably not. “So you just remove that type of thing,” Pau says. “But we have the same setlist and intensity. It doesn’t matter whether we’re performing for 300 or 3,000 people; the principle is the same for us. “It is the same experience.”

There’s another aspect to playing away from home. They basically become ambassadors.

“When we have an appearance at a festival or someplace that rarely has Mexican guests, we do feel that we’re representing our country as a whole,” Pau tells me.

“Even though, of course, we have just a tiny little bit of what Mexican music has to offer,” Dany concurs.

Many of The Warning’s listeners may have encountered Mexican rock music for the first time.

“We strive to represent our nation in the finest light possible, because we come from such a lovely country with such beautiful culture and history and music,” Pau explains.” “Mexican rock is a really distinct music that I hope people from other parts of the globe start exploring since it’s such a rich genre with such a long history. It’s wonderful that we can be a part of it, even if only in small ways. Hopefully, we can open that door in people’s thoughts, making them intrigued about what more Latin America has to offer.

In between touring and releasing an album, The Warning has been playing with other bands. Pau collaborated with Dead Poet Society on the song HURT during the Aftershock Festival last year. When they arrived in Mexico City, she and Dany repeated the process.

Another Aftershock link, The Warning worked with Japanese band Band-Maid, whom they met at the event in 2022 and toured with last year. The two bands began working on a song together via Zoom in December 2023, with The Warning going to Japan to finish it in May (the single, SHOW THEM, was released in August).

In the accompanying song video, each member competes with their instrumental counterpart, while Dany and Band-Maid vocalist Saiki Atsumi exchange all-English vocals.

“It was very interesting to see how both of us were using a language that was not our native one,” Pau tells me. “They speak Japanese; we speak Spanish. So it was about finding a common ground in another language, making it work musically, and communicating musically.”

However, it made nailing the lines more difficult.

“We would select a word, and they would say, ‘That doesn’t mean the same thing in Japanese English.'” We’re like, “What?” What do you mean? It’s the kind of stuff that translates really differently in other people’s music.”

Show Them, a song about refusing to be little and striving to be as large as you can be, was an uplifting listen, supported by its explosive swagger. “Ultimately, music literally became the language,” according to Dany.

This partnership, as well as The Warning’s general popularity, demonstrate that fans’ tastes extend beyond their native nations and languages.

“I feel that now, because of social media and the way that things are connected, we stop looking at music as this foreign export or import,” says Pau. “It’s just this way to communicate, and music from different places in the world is just so different because the language is different, and the phonetics are different.”

This approach is especially vital in a multilingual band.

“We can make music in English and we also make it in Spanish,” according to Pau. “For people to look at those two sides that we have, and for them to consume it in the same way, it’s really cool for us.”

It’s a little early for The Warning to start planning their future album, but when questioned, they do have some ideas.

“I want to have more than one song in Spanish,” Pau tells us.

“Let’s do that!” Ale agrees.

After a year, the three sisters are still able to remain grounded. “We keep a very big balance of knowing where we are, knowing where we were, and…”

“Where we can be,” Dany adds to Pau’s notion.

Of course, having relatives nearby helps. Not only do the band members play important roles, but so do their parents, especially when touring. Pau describes their mother as “a professional mom,” and their father works as a stage manager and audio engineer. Of course, no one can keep your ego in check better than a sister.

“I feel that we keep each other humble,” Pau explains.

“We complement each other,” Dany explains.

“When we rehearse, we know how to call each other out while also recognising the steps that we’re taking,” Pau tells us. “We do that with everything in the band.” “I think we have a good balance.”

And it’s a balance that looks quite promising for the future.

“I think we’re going to be okay!”

The Warning perform at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on April 17. This interview first published in the spring 2025 edition of Kerrang!.