After 10 years of touring across the globe, brushing shoulders with rock royalty and establishing an artistry that is both brutal and intoxicating, The Warning continues to prove themselves as one of the most successful and iconic names in the modern hard rock scene. Composed of the three sisters Daniela (lead vocals, guitar piano), Paulina (drums, vocals, piano) and Alejandra Villareal Vélez (bass, backing vocals, piano), the Mexican-born trio has garnered millions of streams from 15 music videos, three full-length albums and two EP’s. Their fourth studio album, Keep Me Fed, comes out today, marking their first full-length release since their 2022 album Error.
The trio officially formed in 2013, but it was only a year later when they found themselves on the radar of rock and roll legends. In 2014, when The Warning ranged from 9 to 14 years old, their cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” went viral on YouTube, eventually earning praise from Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett himself. This marked the beginning of a massively successful music career for the group, and this was not the band’s only brush with the thrash masterminds. In 2021, they were featured on Metallica’s tribute album The Metallica Blacklist with their “Enter Sandman” rendition. Over the course of their career The Warning has gone on to tour with Halestorm, The Pretty Reckless, Guns N’ Roses, Muse and Foo Fighters and have played at a number of renowned rock music festivals including Rock al Parque, Aftershock and Louder Than Life.
Now, after two years since their last LP, The Warning have just released their new record Keep Me Fed. In a recent press conference, the group said this album defines a new era for the band where they push the boundaries of their musicality. With preceding singles like “Burnout,” “Automatic Sun” and “MORE” that feature Alejandra’s punchy grooves and Paulina’s powerful drum riffs — both flawlessly supporting Daniela’s signature prowess — The Warning shows that this heightened ferocity symbolizes a maturity and newfound glory within their work. Additional singles like “Hell You Call A Dream” and “Qué Más Quieres” prove that The Warning writes tracks that were destined to be blasted for the masses.
Regarding the album title, Paulina says it’s inspired by a certain hunger the band possesses. As musicians, they are fueled to both create and inspire.
“Keep Me Fed speaks about this need that we all have to keep being fed, whether it be entertainment through social media or through everything that we consume, and how we participate in this cycle as well,” Paulina said. “How we feed certain things to our fans or to people who follow us and how we feed on what other people do, and how it’s just a little never ending cycle that we’re in.”
The Warning’s Keep Me Fed is not only a ferocious recollection of how they perceive their world, it is also a means of feeding the appetite of lovers of rock and roll. Though their name hints towards danger and caution, the rock world feels no hesitation when it comes to accepting that The Warning is everything rock and roll is supposed to be.
Thank you guys for doing this today! First I wanted to ask, you guys rose to fame at a very young age. How does it feel to experience rock and roll fame at such a young age? How do you pursue music differently now that you’ve been in the industry for a while?
Paulina: I feel like we didn’t really realize what was going on when we started out. We were just riding this wave of good fortune that happened.
Daniela: I don’t know if we would even describe it as fame. We were receiving a lot of attention for sure that we were not used to, and we were so young (laughs). We just kind of went step by step, and we are very grateful that we got to do this together. I don’t know how I would have done it if were only me.
Paulina: And also to have had the experience of these past 10 years. I feel like it really lets us do what we do now in the best way that we possibly can. It really helped us set a foundation for what we want to do, and now that we have new opportunities and new opportunities for growth, we feel like we have the experience to back it up, which is fantastic. It’s a really big blessing to have had all of those experiences.
Daniela: Ten years of experience, that’s insane (laughs).
I love that for you guys. Kind of going off of that, in terms of your career, you guys have worked with iconic groups like Metallica, The Pretty Reckless and so many others. How does it feel to have collaborated or played with so many iconic names in rock music?
Daniela: Amazing. We’re super grateful for all those opportunities and we’re super grateful for everyone who looked at our project and wanted to have that.
Paulina: To invite us and to give us that platform to grow. It just means the world.
Speaking of the platform that you guys have, as an all-female rock band in the scene, how has it been to pursue music in an industry that consists of — and has historically consisted of — mostly men?
Paulina: I feel like as women, it’s not like we always sit down and think about it like, ‘Oh my God we’re the only women here.’ It’s not something that we talk about or that we write about, but more than anything, it is just part of the experience that we live in day-to-day. And we’ve been living it for 10 years. So it is something that, more than anything, people don’t have high expectations. They really expect a gimmicky thing, and they don’t expect women to step on these stages and play well. So it’s really our goal every time that we step on these stages to show what we do musically, and hopefully that changes people’s minds. And over the years it has just been chipping away at rock and slowly things have gotten better. Like, the women’s bathrooms used to be our private bathrooms every time we went to a festival. And now it’s really nice to see there’s a line now. We have to wait. So that means that doors are being opened and more opportunities are being given. And to be a part of that change, to open those doors as well, is just an honor that we get to do that with our music.
I love that you guys are doing that and I love that you’re being this band that other girls who want to pursue rock music can look up to. Switching gears a little bit, I of course wanted to ask about the new album. How is it different from your previous work that you’ve put out?
Daniela: Oh very different. I feel like we grew a lot in the last two years. We started touring, we got to experience a lot of different things, meet a lot of different people. And the last album that we had was a pandemic album. We had all the time in the world to be creative, to nitpick, and this new album is the complete opposite. In between tours, a very chaotic schedule, writing with other people. We put everything that we hadn’t done in our whole careers into a single album and challenged ourselves musically to get that step further. So yeah, very different and we love it. We love what it represents for us, this new era of The Warning, and this new sound that we discovered within ourselves to just have each song feel like us and still offer different things in a very wide area musically.
I did want to ask about one single ahead of the record, “Automatic Sun.” I love that song so much, what was the inspiration and thought process behind that song specifically?
Paulina: “Automatic Sun” was the last song that we wrote for the record and it was a really crazy process.
Daniela: We had no ideas.
Paulina: We were really tired, and we had no idea what we wanted to write about and sing about. But it grew into this thing where we had the phrase “automatic sun,” and we wrote the whole song around that. “Automatic Sun” is about missing somebody and really craving the energy that they emit and just being drawn to that gravitational pull that this person has on you. And it’s a really fun song. It is personally my favorite song on the album, and now that we’re playing it live, you connect so much with people. You can feel the excitement and it is just so much fun to play.
Audiences will have the chance to hear The Warning play “Automatic Sun” and other tracks from Keep Me Fed when they embark on their North American tour, starting August 30. The European/UK leg of their Keep Me Fed Tour begins July 5. Buy tickets here.
Keep Me Fed, the fourth studio album from The Warning, is out now.
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