Baja Killa's "Rompecabezas": Hardcore Fury as a Weapon
With Rompecabezas, the four-piece Baja Killa embraces hardcore and its working-class roots to make the case for direct action.
There's a song on the new Baja Killa record that sums up really well what this project has been chasing for almost a decade, a search that found its most extreme form on this latest release. The song, which serves as the second track on their third album (Rompecabezas, 2026, Hora Cero Records), is called “Me gustaría proponerte algo que, si te lo dijera, no me hablarías más” (“I'd like to propose something to you that, if I told you, you'd never speak to me again”). It runs just over two minutes and could be split into three parts, like a short story: beginning, middle and end.
In the beginning, the band from Merlo, a district in the western suburbs of Greater Buenos Aires, lays out the song's thesis with a slow but distorted riff that works like the back-and-forth of a swing. Once that first minute is over, the middle arrives and all hell breaks loose. Singer Pilar Baeza shreds her throat with spine-chilling screams: “Something tells me you'll understand, because deep down, you hate being like this too!” she cries. “This unease won't go away unless we find a way out now!” she screams right after, like a series of stab wounds. And she delivers the verdict: “Most people live in the false idea of wanting to get ahead by identifying with the one we have to kill!”
Finally comes the ending, which itself has two parts. In the first, Pilar and her twin sister Micaela, who plays guitar and sings backing vocals, sing over a groove you could call pop punk: “I'd like to kill them, I'd like to kill them.” In the second part, though, the tempo kicks into D-beat and they go back to the guttural sound to spell out the how: “In very crucial ways! In the best ways! In necessary ways! In very violent ways!”
We're in favor of direct action and self-defense, not just in physical terms but in discursive ones too. Of reclaiming the emancipatory violence of the people.
It's not the only song on Rompecabezas that's literally about committing murder. The ninth track, in fact, is called “Matar a un CEO” (“Kill a CEO”), a completely explicit tribute to Luigi Mangione, the American software engineer identified as the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. A kind of Kurt Wilckens, the avenger of Rebellious Patagonia whom Fun People paid tribute to on the cover of The Art(e) of Romance (1999), only in the thick of the 21st century.
“Ideas are weapons,” Pilar tells 421. And she stresses: “We're in favor of direct action and self-defense, not just in physical terms but in discursive ones too. Of reclaiming the emancipatory violence of the people.” Baja Killa's latest record (the name combines a nod to the south —baja, “low”— with killa, which means moon in Quechua, as a way of standing up for the roots of Indigenous peoples and other ways of inhabiting and seeing the world) isn't only about killing; there are other ideas floating around too: collective organizing (as in the song “Apoyo mutuo”), autonomy and personal boundaries (“Aparecés después de tres veranos”), critiques of capitalism and alienation (“Punzante”), memory and nostalgia (“Lo que sentíamos” and “Nuestra canción”).
To trace the band's DNA and understand how it's evolved over time, you have to start at the beginning. Baja Killa was born out of the Baeza sisters' need to make music, back when they were still teenagers. Micaela learned guitar and together they started writing songs. “We started looking for what bands there were in Merlo, Morón and Castelar,” Micaela says. “Back then there weren't many places to play. We were heading into the Macri years and an economic crisis was starting that shut a lot of venues down. That's why we put on shows at our house, where tons of bands played and the gigs went on pretty much all night. There was also Flaco David's house, Casa Frida in Ituzaingó and other DIY spaces we moved around in. That's also where the need to express ourselves came from.”
Pierre Froidevaux
Their first gig was in 2017, at a house in Padua, at a party called Los Magios. Back then, the band was just the two of them. “There were no pedals, nothing. I obviously didn't know how to use a microphone. We were 18,” Pilar points out. “There was no gear, just the creative urge to make songs,” her sister adds.
Their love of music started when they were 10 or 11. They'd turn on the TV and tune in to the music video channel MuchMusic. They were into both Argentine and international stuff. Nothing resembling rock got played at home, but chamamé, polka and other music tied to Guaraní culture did. The sisters' paternal grandparents are Paraguayan and speak Guaraní. Their grandmother grew up in the Paraguayan countryside. The twins proudly say she knows how to farm and has a very strong bond with that culture. Their grandfather came to Argentina with his family and they settled in Fuerte Apache. Later they moved to Merlo, where they were able to build their house.
“My grandfather worked as a bricklayer his whole life and my grandmother as a housekeeper. All of that also makes us rethink who we are and which people make it onto stages,” reflects Micaela, who besides playing in Baja Killa is a philosophy and history teacher, just like her sister Pilar, who also teaches history and is about to finish her degree in Education. “We don't come from a family of academics. Our coming to books and academia was, in that sense, kind of disruptive, because we had no contact with that world.”
Going back to those afternoons of binge-watching music videos, both of them point to “a turning point”: the day a Paramore video showed up before their eyes, the American pop punk band fronted by the powerful, charismatic Hayley Williams. “Hearing a woman fronting a band really moved us. We'd put on MuchMusic and see bands like Massacre or Jauría, but there was very little female representation on TV. We know there were bands with women in them, but breaking into the mainstream media was way harder, especially in those genres,” Pilar explains. “When we grew up and started going out more, we found out there were tons of women on stage. We liked Las Ex, the girls from Mendoza, or Blanco Teta. Also La Piba Berreta, who was in Los Rusos Hijos de Puta at the time. Once we got into the scene, we realized there are a whole lot of us girls.”
Pierre Froidevaux
Baja Killa's early songs don't sound much like the hardcore-screamo-sludge-alt rock combo you hear on Rompecabezas. “We really liked Violeta Parra. Maybe that influence isn't so obvious in our sound, but sometimes influences don't show. Something can influence you and then, in the sound, it can come out totally different,” Pilar explains. Her sister, once again, finishes the thought: “Violeta Parra has something really deep, which was what we were looking for in our music. We also feel an influence from Spinetta. We recorded our first album, Baja Killa, in 2019 and it came out in 2020. Back then we were after something else. It was a sound closer to dream pop, with lots of chords, effects and a more subdued voice. On the next one, Pólvora, from 2024, a more stoner influence showed up, with simpler songs, though the political tinge was always there.”
Another turning point the Baeza sisters identify has to do with hardcore as a genre. And with one band in particular: Distante. “Besides listening to other bands that influence us, like Boris, from Japan, there are also experiences and things that spark that need to express ourselves,” Micaela explains. “We wanted to move toward a heavier sound. There was a before and after when we heard Distante. We always listened to bands and went to shows, but hardcore as a genre really moved us. That's when I started transforming my songwriting.”
Fewer chords but more intensity: that post-punk-born sound was the key to mutating into an angrier and also more direct version of Baja Killa.
Distante is a straight edge hardcore band (a movement that promotes a lifestyle free of drugs and animal products) formed in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and virtually, by Pauli and Fede, a couple with a long track record in the scene. Only in 2021, after a lockdown that killed all nightlife, did Distante complete its lineup and play its first, super-energetic live shows. Pauli is the singer, always at full speed, and the one who unleashes her hardcore attitude on the floor (we don't say stage because they rarely play anywhere that has one). Once again, a woman up front captivating the sisters.
“We fell in love with the hardcore scene, with the Fix Me shows and with all that political information that's so present,” Micaela continues. “I started asking myself what was going on with those breaks, with a way of playing that didn't depend so much on the tools I was used to.” Fewer chords but more intensity: that post-punk-born sound was the key to mutating into an angrier and also more direct version of Baja Killa.
The band's lineup also kept changing, and each new member brought something of their own (Pilar and Micaela currently play with Emma Eroles on drums and Tomás Gamarra on bass). “We moved toward a more minimalist sound. We like the music to change and each record to be after something different. Maybe the next one will be something else,” Pilar says. And she and her sister admit that hardcore also really helped them radicalize their message.
“We're both teachers and we're really into philosophies of revolution and, in particular, philosophies of action, philosophies of praxis,” Micaela explains. “We went straight to the thinkers who work on action and revolutionary movements. Those readings and our own experiences are what inspire us to write. When we talk about the philosophy of praxis, we mean thought that emerges from the action of revolutionary movements, in Latin America as well as Africa and Asia, within that Global South that usually gets made invisible.”
“Antiracism and the need to be situated in the context we live in also run through us,” Pilar adds, picking up her sister's explanation: “There are debates about which terms to use: Global South, Third World, periphery. Being a band in the middle of the crisis we're going through and wanting to say something is a lot.”
Asked about the song “Matar a un CEO,” they confirm it is indeed dedicated to Luigi Mangione. “It's a vindication of direct action and of those forms of intervention that pop up in different places, like what's happening in the streets of France or here too. We're interested in what's going on with social and student movements, and we stand by those forms of action,” Micaela elaborates.
She goes on: “There's a discursive problem around pacifism and the idea of peace. School and the society we live in instilled in us a notion of pacifism that says violence is bad, that violence only breeds more violence. That discourse, which we could call colonial or Westernized pacifism, or just plain cruel, ends up stripping us of political agency and the capacity to act.”
When they talk about direct action and criticize the idea of pacifism, they're also thinking about feminism and self-defense. “A discourse became hegemonic that's all about finding ways to educate the other person, to explain things to them. But defending yourself also means drawing a line. And we can also talk about the possibility of attacking,” Pilar stresses, not mincing words.
As teachers, the Baeza sisters are constantly steeped in political readings and debates about the role of the State and institutions. “People often think there's only one way to be a teacher. When you have certain ideas, the contradiction comes up: ‘But you're a teacher, how can you think like that?’” Pilar says. Micaela picks up the gauntlet: “The education system is also a space of discipline. We've read Marx and Foucault; we know what it can produce. School is a space of indoctrination, but we believe a line of flight can open up from there. For us, that happens through doubt and conversation, not imposition.”
“It's about questioning things, even the things you believe in,” Pilar reflects. “It's uncomfortable when someone tells you you're against peace. We're not against peace: we're against the pacifist discourse that gets imposed on us so we won't take action. That's a different thing. And we try to put that into our songs quite literally,” she argues.
We're not against peace: we're against the pacifist discourse that gets imposed on us so we won't take action.
If there's a way to change the world, for the Baeza sisters it starts with coming together and doing it yourself. They single out all the series and spaces they know that work this way (Anomia, Ciclo Podrido, En El Desierto, Fix Me, Ciclo Katana, Oeste Activa, Tortunoise, among others) as organizing efforts that build community and are also forms of resistance. “Whatever complications and differences there might be, I think we have to keep those spaces going however we can. They have to keep existing,” says Pilar.
“What they want is for you to stay locked up at home with your phone. Just going out, listening to music and meeting up with someone to talk, even if it's uncomfortable, is also a way of organizing. However small it might seem, it can be the beginning of something,” Micaela points out.
There's something in that discomfort they keep bringing up that's also part of what Baja Killa is after. “I think it's important for that discomfort to exist, for someone to hear what you're saying and wonder what you're getting at,” says Pilar. “On TikTok people ask us why we scream, what we're saying or what we're screaming. They've also taken down videos of ours over the political messages, which we figured might happen,” she admits.
Micaela puts it really well: “Sometimes people don't get what we do, but they start liking it anyway. There are comments like "I don't get it, but I dig it." Where we're at is something tiny. We're a pretty unusual scene, a little core that might look weird from the outside. But there are a lot of girls doing guttural screams, putting together cultural projects and playing. We love seeing more and more of them.”
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