Meet DIACERO, a Chilean rock band formed at the end of 2016. The group consists of the founding members of the Hispanic rock group, La Ley or “The Law.” Mauricio Claveria, Rodrigo Abolitz, Luciano Rojas, and Pedro Frugone are back together and making new music, reviving the original sound of La Ley, with acclaimed Chilean singer Ignacio Redard as the band’s frontman.
La Ley History
La Ley was a Chilean rock band formed in 1987 on the initiative of keyboardist and guitarist Andrés Bobe and keyboardist Rodrigo Aboitiz, later band members Beto Cuevas, Mauricio Claveria, and Luciano Rojas would join, with Pedro Frugone entering the band when Andrés Bobe passed away. In April 1994, Bobe would suffer a motorcycle accident while returning to his girlfriend Constanza Piwonka’s house. Andrés, at only thirty-two years old lost control of the motorcycle, despite wearing a helmet, the musician suffered a head injury that killed him in a few minutes. DIACERO drummer and original band member of La Ley Mauricio speaks on the incident,
“We were so sad when Andres passed away because at the same time the spirit of the band changed. Some bandmates left the band at the same time. It was not good, and DIACERO represents the new spirit of La Ley. Ignacio is a very important piece inside all the rest of the band because he represents the new blood, and a new spirit, he doesn’t have a problem creating music with us and having this kind of chemistry.”
La Ley would continue to become very popular in Latin America with the release of their album Invisible with one million copies sold. This album earned the band international fame, with five singles placed on the radio including “El duel”, “Día Cero”, “Cielo Market”, “Hombre” and “1-800”. The band’s 1999 album Uno, released in March 2000 contained five singles and three videos including “Here”, “Out of Me”, “Eternity”, “Space Summer” and “Paraíso”. This album took the group to a great international level of popularity, earning the band a Grammy, making La Ley the only Chilean musical group to achieve an American Grammy award.
The Birth of DIACERO
In 2016, Beto Cuevas announced the dissolution of the band La Ley, in unilateral agreement with its other members Pedro Frugone and Mauricio Claveria. In September of that year, Pedro and Mauricio announced that they were working on a new project. Hear Mauricio discuss this transition,
“When we left La Ley Pedro called me and told me about it, the idea is to go to Chile and have our reunion with our ex-partners it was a wonderful reunion, but to me the best thing, before DIACERO, when we were La Ley we had special chemistry at the time to create songs, make arrangements, do live performances and all that stuff, and after 20 years where we don’t keep in contact, at the first rehearsal we had absolutely the same chemistry. It was a wonderful experience for me, and I think the rest of the band too and it was amazing. That’s the idea of DIACERO. We keep continuing all the kinds of music from DIACERO and create new songs too.”
“It’s Like Riding A Bike, You Don’t Forget It”
DIACERO brings together four former members of “The Law” or La Ley, Mauricio Clavería, Pedro Frugone, Rodrigo Aboítiz, and Luciano Rojas, along with the vocalist of the electro-pop duo The Plug-in, Ignacio Redard. Thanks to the band’s long history as former La Ley members, DIACERO is known roundly as “The Historical Law.” The band presented their first single “Ecos” in November that year, which earned strong success and reach, surprising the public. On January 7, 2017, DIACERO made their live premiere at the Chilean Rock Summit, performing their first single along with classic La Ley songs.
In January 2019 DIACERO released their debut album ‘topography’, which includes 11 songs and was premiered live at the Caupolicán Theater in February. Rodrigo, keyboardist and original band member of La Ley speaks on playing with his old band partners again after twenty years!
“I knew Ignacio 12-13 years ago because we were working on another project. We were in Spain with Ignacio when we received a call from Pedro talking about a reunion of the members of La Ley, and inviting Ignacio to be the lead vocalist. It was strange at the time, I started to imagine in my mind all the reasons why we could do it. We went to Chile, it had been 20 years since we played together.”
DIACERO Honors The Original Sound of La Ley
If you enjoyed the pre-2000 sound of La Ley’s music, you’ll enjoy the work behind DIACERO! The original band members of La Ley found influences from rock bands of the late 80s and the early 90s “the new wave”, and British Pop, with influences from bands like the New Romantics, Genesis, Pink Floyd, the Doors, and more! La Ley had all these previous influences incorporated into the band’s music, and DIACERO holds to this style, “classic rock and electronic rock mixed perfectly”. Ignacio Wasn’t “Too New” For DIACERO
While many of the band La Ley’s original fans transferred over to DIACERO, many were skeptical of the band’s authenticity without its former lead singer, Beto Cuevas. But DIACERO’s lead singer Ignacio fit right in, having found inspiration previously from none other than the rock band La Ley while growing up in the 90s!
“La Ley is one of my influences from when I was growing up, it’s sort of full circle that I get to work with people who made music that helped shape me as a musician. In Chile there was no escaping La Ley, it was a huge influence in Chilean pop and rock music, if you were growing up in the 90s it was sort of part of the curriculum. They had an album called “Invisible” which I listened to a lot when I was younger. One of their earlier EPs was influential. I grew up listening to a lot of English music, but from the Latin music scene La Ley was up there as an influence.”
DIACERO is the essence of the work the former band members did with La Ley, continuing with this passion, this love, the band created new songs together. Ignacio was the perfect fit, with how he thinks about music, how he works, the band found his transition into the band to be seamless. Ignacio, lead singer of DIACERO discusses his thoughts on joining a band with former members from La Ley,
“To see these guys you wouldn’t know that they haven’t talked in such a long time, you can really tell that they picked up from where they left off, and that’s a really special thing to see. From my position where I’m inside the band now, but just coming into something new, it’s really important to have such a good vibe with the band and they had it. Years of working together and friendship it’s all still there which is really nice to see.”
It’s All About What Happens On The Stage
DIACERO loves playing the classic songs of La Ley for their audiences but wants their new songs to feel as “magical” as the old ones. The band loves playing “Dia Cero” La Ley’s classic piece, as well as “Ecos” DIACERO’s debut single. The classic songs always energize the audience, but the new songs are a fun challenge for the group. The idea behind DIACERO is to combine the new with the old, to play all of La Ley’s classic pieces along with DIACERO’s new works. The band “want(s) the new songs to feel as magical as the old songs. For us, we know the new songs and we love the new songs, and we want to see that moment when the audience members get to fall in love with the new songs.”
The Pandemic Didn’t Stop DIACERO from Writing New Music
As a long-distance band, with Pedro, the band’s guitarist living in Texas, and Mauricio the band’s drummer, residing in Mexico the group was used to working remotely with long-distance calls long before the pandemic hit. The band had worked with a “ping-pong” system previously, where each of the band members would take the song, work on it for a little bit and improve it while writing the group’s 2019 album. Currently, the group is working on two to three new songs, one is ready to be released. DIACERO is “really looking forward to sharing that (new music), that’s always a vulnerable moment but we’re really happy with the new stuff, and we feel like actually, our whole new relationship with TSE Entertainment has really helped us to sit down and say we need new music, we need to move along. Because sometimes you’re a little self-conscious about making new music, you’re really happy with your previous album and you need a little push, and we feel like this has been the little push and we’re making new music we really like and we can’t wait for everyone to hear.”
Be Patient, Have Faith, and Persevere
DIACERO has advice for the young artists out there pursuing careers similar to theirs, have perseverance, patience, and blind faith. “It’s a career where you feel a lot of frustration all the time. You have to keep trying to get the goal, it is very frustrating, but you have to fight, you have to fight all the time.” Ignacio speaks on the pressures of finding success as an artist,
“You have to get used to frustration being your baseline, instead of it being a low that you reach it has to be your baseline. I feel like there is this caricature of a successful musician where you reach a point and you “make it” and everything goes well, and it’s not really like that, you make it, and then you’re not making it, and then you make it again, and then the bar of success moves too.”
Catch DIACERO Live!
DIACERO wants you to “consider this an open invitation to see us live. We really enjoy working in the studio, we enjoy making new music and we’re really happy with our recordings, but it’s when we play live that it really comes together for us. We’ve had people who were really big fans of my partners’ work in the past and maybe they were on the fence but they saw us live and they saw this magic that happens between my friends here and also how it works with a new member and it does really feel magical and so we want to make an open invitation to anyone who wants to join us and be a part of it because it is very special when we get together and perform live!”
You can view TSE’s DIACERO Artist Page Here
Sources:
Interview with DIACERO band members: Ignacio Redard, Rodrigo Aboitiz, Mauricio Claveria, Pedro Frugone and Luciano Rojas;
https://tseentertainment.com/diacero/
https://second.wiki/wiki/diacero
