THE WARNING - BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE, 21ST APRIL 2024

BY SHARI BLACK VELVET

Being an only child, my Black Velvet existence is a far cry from that of The Warning – a trio of sisters from Monterrey, Mexico. When you don’t have siblings, your life is so different from those that do. The Warning’s Daniela, Paulina and Alejandra Villarreal Velez have been a band since 2013. They get to share their experiences travelling the world with each other, and their hard work and sisterly support has helped them achieve some outstanding landmarks and milestones. With their fourth album, ‘Keep Me Fed’, due for release at the end of June, the trio have worked with producer David Bendeth, and their journal of memories includes supporting the likes of Guns N’ Roses and Muse, to name just a couple.

But now, they’re touring the UK as a headline act in their own right, selling out shows. After a support slot from female five-piece Conquer Divide, who we featured in issue 109 of Black Velvet, the three sisters kick in with ‘S!CK’ – one of the tracks already released from the upcoming album. And, immediately, we notice how talented the three girls are. While each have mastered their own instrument – Dany on vocals and guitar, Ale on bass, and Paulina on drums – all three also have notable singing voices. Throughout the songs, although Dany is the lead vocalist, Paulina sings a few lines here and there, with the aid of a microphone headset, astounding everyone with her talents. Songs such as ‘Z’ have hard, stomping drum beats, while the goth rock-tinged ‘CHOKE’ sees Dany sing with a very commanding voice. With the band being only a three-piece, they are quite spaced out on stage, with Dany and Ale standing on opposite sides of the stage, behind their microphones. Ale initiates ‘Dust To Dust’ with a beguiling bass riff, before Dany’s haunting vocals join the mix. There’s a fuzziness to the guitars in ‘Automatic Sun’, while ‘MONEY’ kicks off with a till ‘Ka-Ching’, and has a sultry funk to it.

The band have a few songs with Spanish lyrics – ‘MARTIRIO’ being one of them, bringing their home language to the rest of the world. The crowd chant ‘Ole Ole’ and ‘one more song’, but the band oblige with two – ‘Narcisista’, another Spanish number, from the album of the same name, released in 2019, before the passionate ‘EVOLVE’, which begins with a razor-sharp riff, features powerful vocals and instrumentation, and gets the whole crowd clapping in time. While the sisters have been a band for over a decade, they’re still young and it’s still early days. We can definitely picture them taking over the world in the next few years, mark our words. Catch them now before they grace much bigger stages. (PS. If we ever had sisters, we'd love sisters as awesome as the Villarreal Velez sisters).