In the winter of 2003, four friends from Argentina wanted to solve an existential problem: they needed a name for their band. Frustrated after weeks without an answer, they turned to the divination of a static-filled screen. The cold flicker of a trashy cyberpunk film set the mood for the night. Chatter drowned out the plot until a shadowy figure entered the frame. A man wielding a shotgun muttered something about killing a motorcycle cop. Gritty, absurd, and mystifying, the phrase was perfect for naming a band that wanted to take indie rock to the cosmos.
Ascending from a suburban neighborhood surrounded by tedium, El Mato a un Policia Motorizado was born to tell stories of friends growing into adulthood amid turmoil. Its songs fought an epic battle: trying to be okay when the world collapses around you. The new century did not arrive like a sci-fi thriller, with lasers and flying cars. Instead, it vaporized stability and control. El Mato tapped into that collective yearning, offering a lifeline of meaning among chaos. Fans found in them something real to hold on to, and—with sharp melodies, fast guitars, and lyrics designed to be sung in collective rapture—it became the defining band of Latin American millennial music.
El Mato was formed in La Plata by Santiago Barrionuevo, Willy Ruiz Díaz, Manuel Sánchez Viamonte, and Gustavo Monsalvo. They all come from middle-class upbringings and spent time listening to music and watching movies before they began playing together. Barrionuevo and Ruiz Díaz were visual arts students, Sánchez has a literature background, and Monsalvo met them through a neighbor. Friendship was the bedrock for their musical collaboration. The band’s beginnings were marked by impromptu living room jams and shows in abandoned garages, where the joy of shared creation shaped the heartfelt and raw sound that became their hallmark. Rooted in those days, the belief that empathy is the only shelter in unbearable times made El Mato a generational icon.
The band emerged when rock in Argentina was at an all-time low. Destroyed by creative complacency and a rampaging economic crisis, what had once been a strong musical tradition was waning. A decade of failed economic reforms left the country broken, impoverishing the population and causing discontent that, by 2001, spilled into riots and looting. Mainstream rock acts faltered, distanced from the experiences of their fans; in contrast, El Mato’s music felt like a revelation. Tinged with the pop violence of the sci-fi films they loved, it refused to be consumed by the wreckage. El Mato found an escape in being louder than the racket around it. The band’s shows were celebrations for fans to unite, pogoing, singing, and dancing with a force that could dismiss any woe.
Yet another cataclysm forged the band for a greater mission. In the 2000s, file sharing devastated the music industry, and Argentina was no exception. A system based on selling overpriced CDs cratered one download at a time, overturning established artists. The wildfire cleared pastures for others. El Mato realized that an online DIY movement offered a way forward. The band recorded at home and used the internet to promote its music. An ardent online cult following mushroomed around El Mato, propelling the band into the world; its songs about camaraderie, sincere emotions, and low-scale life victories resonated widely. It was music that helped fans make sense of bewildering times, and that was an immense gift. Two decades into its existence, El Mato has grown into Latin America’s leading independent band. The world’s disarray never stopped, but from half-empty basements in Buenos Aires to headlining festivals in Europe, El Mato fulfilled its promise: commotion can lead to catharsis if you listen through the noise.
A Game of Making and Breaking Bands
Sitting across a fresh-faced El Mato, Argentinian rock journalist Tom Lupo let loose. “Did you fall in love with the same teacher?” he asked, imagining the band’s juvenile mischief. Barrionuevo snapped back: “We fell in love with each other.”* The members of El Mato had been friends since elementary school, and that was no joking matter. Barrionuevo met Ruiz Díaz years before they picked up an instrument. Their bond was forged in the magnetic pull of shared sensibilities, predating any musical project. A band was just another excuse to hang out.
In a university town like La Plata, it’s common for friends to get together and play. “Some do it as a one-off, and others make it to the first record,” Sánchez remembered in conversation with Hablatumúsica. The four founders were not novices, despite being in their early twenties when El Mato started. Barrionuevo cut his teeth at sixteen playing bass with Terapia, a pop-punk group that dissolved when the members discovered grunge. Aneurisma followed, flaunting a raggedy sound that confirmed its Nirvana-nodding name. Ruiz Díaz was also a grunge fan and joined to play drums. After years of turning each other onto music and comic books, the two friends were finally making music together.
It was no surprise that alternative rock connected two disaffected teens, but Barrionuevo and Ruiz Díaz were not dogmatic in their taste. Both revered Embajada Boliviana, an Argentinian punk band that perfected a melodic and energetic songwriting reminiscent of the Ramones. “Embajada Boliviana changed my life,” Barrionuevo confessed to Lula (en verano). “They were kids from La Plata who recorded a tape at home with whatever was at hand. Their songs were a miracle. I wanted to become a musician because of them.” The inspiration went beyond an exemplary DIY resolve. Rising melodies and chorus fit for a soccer stadium linked Embajada Boliviana and El Mato. A homespun scrappiness became a cornerstone of El Mato’s sound, retaining a punk rock sparkle in its compositions.
As the friends grew older, they formed a social circle around shared music. Ruiz Díaz and Monsalvo lived next door to each other. One day, Ruiz Díaz gave Monsalvo a Sonic Youth cassette. Entranced, Monsalvo quit his classic rock favorites and started Grupo Mazinger. The band played moody songs with overdriven guitars and noisy crescendos that attested to the impact of the tape. Monsalvo used to practice across the street from Aneurisma. He asked Ruiz Díaz what music they made and the answer was punk. “They did not sound punk at all,” Monsalvo told music critic Nicolás Igarzábal years later, though he conceded that their combination of alt-rock and melody pulled him in.
By 2003, the elements that incubated El Mato were reaching critical mass. Although Grupo Mazinger recorded an album in 2001, longevity was never in the picture—the fun was in making and breaking bands. Brimming with university students, La Plata has always been an incubator for new ideas. Sánchez, a guitar-playing member of the clique, assembled Benji Gregory with Barrionuevo, Javier Sisti Ripoll, and Diego Darrigrán. When the last two departed, Ruiz Díaz was summoned as a drummer. The only friend left without a band was Monsalvo; Benji Gregory could use another guitar, and the musicians soon called him.
The four original El Mato members met in the summer of 2003 in the living room of a family home turned communal practice space. They plugged their childhood instruments into borrowed amps and makeshift effect units. The unassuming mood of the encounter was deceiving. This time it was more than a garage rock lark. Just a few nights before, the group had found a new name in a haze sci-fi dross. Demolishing electricity transfixed the band as they launched into “Sobredosis de droga.” Unleashed by incandescent drumming, a stormy riff raced toward the melody while Barrionuevo sang about battling monsters for love. Within seconds, the dissonant mystique and punk energy of their early experiments coalesced into a nearly telepathic shared vision. El Mato was finally born.
The Indie Ethos at the End of the World
In the early 2000s, the underground scene in Argentina was defined by the opposition of rock chabón and alternative rock. Rock chabón formed at the confluence of blues and punk. Brash and elemental, it focused on the day-to-day of kids living on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Its songs explored loneliness and young love, telling stories of friends going to soccer matches, committing petty crimes, and hanging out with a beer in hand. Alternative rock was a nebulous community of bands that worshipped the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies. Introverted detachment and some self-indulgence put them at odds with mass appeal. They were art projects above all, not pop vehicles. Fans of populist punk and eccentric sonic adventurers, El Mato seemed to close the divide.
The band debuted in 2003 with Tormenta roja. There was a lo-fi crunch to its music that placed the three-track EP in the alternative rock camp, though El Mato’s playfulness and emotional warmth stood out. The title track deals with relationship anxieties under the guise of an apocalyptic storm. Far from maudlin, its wired riffing agitates the song until it explodes into a quasi-pop exhale. “Sobredosis de droga” is less a doped-out anthem than a salute to the pulpy action movies the band loved. “Escupime” closes the EP betting on decoy and duality. Spitting worked as an edgy seduction metaphor and it also suggested punk’s gobbing tradition. It was a defiant note that betrayed the band’s iconoclastic urges.
The EP’s closing track offered a glimpse of things to come. Something that set El Mato apart from the beginning was repetition. Simple phrases sung over and over are transfigured into mantras. Reiteration dismantles meaning and loads the words with redeeming power. The band members noticed how they got goosebumps even during rehearsals; propelled by the fans’ energy, the effect was earth-shattering. First attempted in “Escupime,” it was a songwriting device the band continued to explore.
None of this sounded like Argentinian alternative rock, indie, or anything else. When discussing its music, El Mato mentioned Matador Records as a primary influence. The fingerprints of Matador’s roster—Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, Pavement—were all over El Mato’s early work. The legendary US indie rock label inspired not just its sound but a way of being. Barrionuevo acknowledged that. Speaking to Everlong Magazine, he reminisced: “Growing up, we had a copy of What’s Up Matador, a label compilation showcasing all their bands. That was our bible. It was the engine for everything we did.”
If Matador provided the blueprint, El Mato brought it home. Until its arrival, no local bands were surveying that ramshackle yet approachable register. Argentina’s indie scene was inspired by British art rock, surviving in a small pocket within the alternative realm. Its two most notable representatives were the bands Suárez and Jaime Sin Tierra. Suárez sculpted melancholic odes from noise; Jaime Sin Tierra shed its emotions into stargazing grandeur. More guarded and cerebral than the Matador acts, they shaped Argentinian indie at the turn of the millennium.
Keeping an independent band has always been a herculean task, not least in crisis-bitten Argentina. The landscape was predictably bleak, and both Suárez and Jaime Sin Tierra disbanded before El Mato emerged. In parallel, rock chabón degraded into self-destructive vacuity. The economic downturn that hit Argentina in the early 2000s left most of the country at the edge of hopelessness. The stories of an underclass with no future became more appealing than ever. Music no longer offered escape or expression, just gnashing of teeth. Rock chabón shows turned into experiences of cheap drugs, exacerbated emotions, and mounting risk. It was the only way for many fans to get out of everyday misery.
Nihilism soon showed its dark side when a venue burned down while Callejeros played a year-end show in 2004. Soccer hooliganism had infiltrated rock chabón. Now concerts involved pyrotechnics displays, frenzied masses, and oversold venues. A flare caught in the roof, and the police repressed the audience instead of helping them out of a building that had no escape exits or fireproofing. Hundreds died; thousands were injured. Tragedy suffocated rock chabón forever.
A wave of forced closures followed, limiting the number of live music venues in Buenos Aires. The whole underground took a hit. Concerts were seen as more dangerous than a high-risk soccer match. Carving out a niche between La Plata and Buenos Aires, El Mato played at university parties, sports clubs, basement bars, and cultural centers—wherever anyone was willing to listen.
El Mato did not share the loftiness of preceding indie acts. Its songs encouraged emotional involvement, not withdrawn diffidence. The press noticed how El Mato fans sang back every word and often invaded the stage, to the delight of the musicians. “Indie chabón” was the semi-disparaging label invented for them. The implication of a lesser indie, not as sophisticated and perhaps of a lower social stratum, was evident. Barrionuevo disarmed the term, calling it “a funny nickname.” He brushed off condescension with the same casualness that the band displayed onstage wearing soccer shorts and flip-flops.
There was more to it than haughty indie slumming it out: music was following the needs of the audience. “El Mato does not sing about neighborhood life the same way [other] rock chabón [musicians] did. They do it more innocently, talking about friendship and fantasy,” indie label head Lucas Garófalo noted in an interview with the Buenos Aires newspaper Página 12. Argentinian society was rebuilding its relationship with rock, and individualistic introspection could be no more. Gregariousness and compassion were essential. El Mato embodied those ideals and came to be seen as the band that defined a new era. “They saved rock,” music critic Walter Lezcano proclaimed. “With El Mato fear was gone as a metaphor but also in a real way.” he continued. “Their songs were clear: the world is falling apart, but we have these guitars and some friends. That’s all we need.” For a generation that had come of age amid economic hardship and cultural decay, it was a resonant vow.
Unbearable Beauty Emanating from Chaos
“Kermit the Frog is just a sock with two buttons on it. That’s why it is so great. Simplicity.” Barrionuevo was telling Argentinian poet Fabián Casas about his favorite Muppet. He might as well have been describing his own songs. Rejecting the ornate metaphors and cryptic imagery characteristic of what was considered great Argentinian songwriting, Barrionuevo believed in direct lyrics sung with urgency and heart.
When El Mato’s self-titled LP came out in 2004, Barrionuevo had honed his minimalistic songwriting and could conjure great emotion with the most frugal resources. In “Sábado,” five phrases tell a story of yearning, unrequited love, and loneliness. Unadorned and immediate, the lines ring as if lifted from an adolescent diary: “If I call you to play, you will say no.” Repeated with soaring energy, the lyrics speak of heartbreak, though not of defeat. Every word is sung with the intensity of a great chorus, welcoming you to feel sadness together with the band.
However, El Mato’s music was not just about channeling emotions. It wanted to create a universe. Watching sci-fi movies, El Mato learned the importance of world-building. On its first LP, the band began to craft a geography and a mood. Nostalgia is conjured through images of summer days, sunsets, and night adventures. Intimate memories and mundane situations are tinted with the same epic resonance. Embedded in the scenario of a working-class neighborhood, those signifiers reflect a vivid sense of place.
El Mato would not stay a garage band for long. Artistic ambition took it to the next level. Between 2005 and 2008, they released a trilogy of EPs tackling the concepts of birth, life, and death. Navidad de reserva (2005) was inspired by the Christmas music early rock ’n’ roll artists used to make, although for El Mató, Christmas was not a celebration but an imposition. You had to be cheerful no matter what. The unspoken sadness of the band’s early music bubbles up in slower and muddier tracks. “Noches buenas” drips pain while spouting hollow holiday greetings. It’s an emblematic cut of a sullen and antagonistic EP.
Compared to past releases, this record conveys a different attitude about sentimental setbacks and worldly aches: Navidad de reserva is as much about new life as it is about death, haunted by police chases, crashing cars, and fallen heroes. A ruinous temper upstages the notion of Christmas as a beginning. The title track no longer deals with lovelessness by reminiscing from a teenage bed; left alone, its narrator is glad to self-destruct with drugs and alcohol. Beneath the allure of solipsism, despair threatens to tip the scale.
On Un millón de euros (2006), the EP about life, the group crash-lands in their old neighborhood. There, they meet friends who can never move on. They witness broken cars and decaying family homes. They rejoice for past girlfriends who go searching for their freedom. Those characters and situations populate the songs. Following an EP where the band deals with Argentinian rock’s tragedy with exasperation, an unexpected return to its roots showed El Mato that community matters. This was the message of an EP that kicked down many doors for the band. “Amigo piedra” and “Chica rutera” mythologized friends from La Plata into relatable archetypes, giving El Mato its first hits. Underground radio stations began to notice. El Mato had sharpened its noisy guitars and dynamic choruses, finding a signature sound that could no longer be simplified to its influences or pulp tropes.
The final EP in the trilogy meshed a zombie apocalypse and the notion of rebirth after a calamity that the Mayans had predicted for 2012. “The album will be about the end of the world but with an optimistic horizon,” Barrionuevo told the Bolivian newspaper Opinión in 2007. Long in the making, Día de los Muertos (2008) arrived with scenes of undead masses roaming urban hellscapes. It also presents a band in control of its experimental bona fides. El Mato’s fantasies of concept albums, trashy pop violence, and love songs in the middle of a zombie invasion peaked with Día de los Muertos. Though it could be unsettling, with lyrics about waiting for the final showdown perched on top of your home, the music speaks of salvation with genuine certainty. Crawling to a noise pop deflagration, the songs promise restoration through fire.
“Believe it or not, this is Argentinian rock in 2008: daring, conceptual, and independent,” closed Rolling Stone magazine’s rave review. Five years were enough for El Mato to reshape a crestfallen scene. Its trilogy synthesized the vertigo of stage-diving fans and the emotional outpouring of its shows, resignifying the spirited live experiences that had long characterized Argentinian rock. Damnation and renewal were the two forces that rock music in Argentina needed to grapple with if the scene was to survive. El Mato forged them into pop escapism anchored by collective kindness. Past the stage of a promising indie band, El Mato was at the cusp of international stardom few Argentinian artists had reached before.
Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World
For decades, promoting an independent show required handing out flyers and praying that someone showed up. In the mid-2000s, social media was changing the game. Barrionuevo loved making posters with unique art for each concert. Hand-drawn and quirky, steeped in the band’s sci-fi aesthetic, those designs were another outlet for El Mato to communicate with its fans. Uploading them to whatever embryonic image-based social platform was available at the time felt like a natural extension of the process.
It worked. People printed out the posters, collected them, and even made large banners. It was happening beyond La Plata. In 2007, a fan and promoter in Brazil flew the band to close a festival in São Paulo. “Another miracle of the internet,” Ruiz Díaz recalled. There was hard work behind the magic. El Mato shared its music on Myspace; Barrionuevo spent hours replying to emails from fans and journalists. Those exchanges built a community.
Barrionuevo understood that unlike its predecessors, El Mato had access to unparalleled resources. Embajada Boliviana sold their cassettes out of a family-owned car dealership; Suárez had to walk around Buenos Aires hauling boxes full of CDs. “It is easier now. You can record and design stuff at home. Even promote shows, your songs, whatever you need,” Barrionuevo told Opinión. It was not only about convenience: “This new thing comes from wanting to work outside the music industry and to see that you can keep an art project running in peace and harmony without going crazy with dreams of rankings and popularity. It’s a spiritual turn toward artistic purity,” he added.
El Mato was not alone in using the internet to spark a revolution. The school friends the musicians used to play with formed their own bands: Valentín y los Volcanes, 107 Faunos, Koyi, and Sr. Tomate. Pooling efforts made sense. Laptra, the digital record label started by El Mato and their friends, began as a cooperative where everyone helped record, sell tickets, handle live sound, and push the music forward. The bands had members who studied design, visual arts, music, sound engineering, and communication—the talent was vast and willing. At first, Laptra released El Mato’s music. Then it began organizing festivals and putting out compilations. By 2008, it had published twelve albums by rising artists like 107 Faunos, Go-Neko!, and Prietto Viaja al Cosmos con Mariano. An infrastructure for the movement had been established.
Laptra was named after a Pokémon character (the elegant water reptile Lapras), but it was a serious endeavor. “We started in the middle of a crisis bigger than the economy or the music industry,” said cofounder Javier Sisti Ripoll of 107 Faunos in an interview with Juan Manuel Ciucci. “That was our advantage. We were inspired by other labels we liked, not by a business model. We had no capital but our enthusiasm.” Matador Records had shown them the way: it mattered to curate an aesthetic and a sound. Laptra moved to the forefront of the new Argentinian indie sound following those principles. Cranked guitars, memorable melodies, communal singalongs, and an underground edge defined the movement as much as the unwavering DIY convictions did.
Allies could be found anywhere. Atrás Hay Truenos was recruited in Neuquén; the band invited El Mato to play in the Patagonian capital, miles away from La Plata. Everything was ready for the show until martial law was declared in response to protests in Neuquén, all events canceled. Unwilling to give up, El Mato sneaked into town hidden in a truck, evading tear gas and burning tires. It was a scene from the B movies the band loved: bizarre and exhilarating. Atrás Hay Truenos musicians coordinated the operation and made the clandestine performance happen. That resolve amazed El Mato; it sealed a pact between the two bands. Atrás Hay Truenos was an instrumental group with strong space rock influences. A priori, they existed in a universe far from El Mato’s melodic rumpus, yet Atrás Hay Truenos felt Laptra was a home, given the complete commitment to art as resistance that characterized the label. Under that principle, the label became a central node for cutting-edge Argentinian music.
It didn’t take long for international festivals to begin booking Laptra bands. El Mato was the first to cross the pond, invited to Spain by Primavera Sound in 2010. The concert was part of the festival’s parallel programming, targeting industry professionals more than average festivalgoers—but fortune struck when nearby shows were delayed due to technical problems. El Mato attracted an eager audience, mixing nostalgic expats and locals who marveled at their discovery. Road-tested and hungry, the band rose to the occasion and ran with the opportunity.
Primavera Sound invited El Mato again in 2011, this time with a prime slot on a bigger stage. That year, Spanish indie label Limbo Starr signed the band to release its music in Europe. With a foothold in the country, yearly Spanish tours cemented El Mato in the local scene; bigger and wilder shows proved the band was playing for more than only Argentinians living in Spain. A homebred fandom was forming. The rest of Europe was also within the band’s reach.
Early tours sleeping on the floor of friends’ apartments and driving a van across different countries gave way to additional organized dates in places as distant as England, where one night the airline misplaced their instruments and El Mato ended up playing with gear borrowed from Coldplay. DIY grit and arena gloss were scraping at each other as a new phase commenced for the band.
A Second Leap into the Unknown
Facing their tenth anniversary, the musicians of El Mato were asked by Vice magazine to reflect on their journey so far. “This is our best moment. Traveling everywhere and being accepted this way was unthinkable when we started,” Barrionuevo replied. The band spent 2010, 2011, and 2012 touring. Sold-out shows in La Plata, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona were reasons to celebrate. But the dream of taking their music to the world came with unexpected costs. The prolific group had slowed down.
Eight years passed between the band’s first LP and its follow-up, La dinastía Scorpio (2012). More than a sophomore album, this was its first record released internationally, a second introduction to the world after a decade of underground acclaim. Anticipation and pressure built by the day. El Mato decided to think bigger. Agustín Spasoff joined to play keyboards on tour and became a full-time member in 2012. Eduardo Bergallo, a top producer, was hired to work on the album at a professional studio. The musicians were not only leaving behind their home recording days—Bergallo had credits with Latin pop stars as big as Shakira. They were taking a gamble.
The result was a record that balances synthesis and evolution. Minimalist and evocative songs remained at the core of El Mato’s work. “El magnetismo” opens the album with a declaration of love built on little more than an organ drone. Yet, it was also evident that some of the band’s most effective devices had run their course. The repetition of simple phrases risked falling into self-help. “Terror,” insisting over a dozen times to not be scared, flirted with parody instead of transcendence. Mantric poetry was turning pedestrian.
Entering their thirties, the musicians of El Mato realized adolescent impulses could take them only so far. Even the album cover avoided sci-fi themes, going for regular kids lifting an unknown trophy; this was a down-to-earth record by a cosmic rock crew. The most affecting moments came from songs about growing up not in some distant galaxy, but in the messy suburbs of La Plata. “Nuevos discos” is a breakup song, but it also evokes the ecstasy of discovering love, music, and drugs. “Chica de oro,” with its realistic promises to settle down, suggests a new sense of fulfillment. A mixture of tenderness and loss remodeled El Mato’s style as it left early adulthood behind.
The album’s standout track, “Más o menos bien,” became a millennial anthem because of its disarming honesty. Its verses recount the inescapable realities of life—relationships fail, families crumble, money is scarce. El Mato was speaking from experience, and you could tell. Hard-earned maturity had put the band on the other side of escapism. Barrionuevo’s songwriting grew wiser. “Más o menos bien” blossoms into quiet reassurance: things will not be perfect, but they can still be okay. That chorus, sung with the band’s signature determination, lifted fans while giving proof of El Mato’s own history. The band had started when Argentina was in flames and, a decade later, it could tell the world it was worth not giving up.
In 2012, as El Mato closed the chapter on its indie years, its fans were entering an adult world filled with corruption and defeat. Music could be a comforting force. That mission was greater than any comic book or movie could ever conjure. El Mató had just uncovered defiance in hope.
Purposeful Melancholy on a Grander Scale
The first taste of professional recording techniques changed El Mato. Past the worry of sounding too polished, the band was enthralled by the possibilities of the studio as an instrument. Thinking about the next steps, Barrionuevo developed a fascination for Pet Sounds (1966). He was inspired by the work of manic genius that the Beach Boys devised to separate themselves from their surf rock days. He liked the challenge of stretching a group’s sound beyond its limits. The follow-up to La dinastía Scorpio would see El Mato transformed into a group of mad scientists, reworking arrangements, tweaking melodies, and layering synths. It was time to push themselves past any preconceptions.
El Mato reunited with producer Eduardo Bergallo to realize its vision and moved the recording sessions to Sonic Ranch studio in Texas. Located on a historic hacienda near the Mexican border, the studio holds the world’s largest collection of vintage equipment. It was a far cry from the band’s first recordings with borrowed guitars and domestic computers. Agustín Spasoff spent days surrounded by keyboards and synths, toying with sounds and coaxing textures that slowly displaced the lo-fi guitars that had identified El Mato. While some fans resisted La dinastía Scorpio’s crisper production, Barrionuevo had no doubts: “If you want to try something new, you have to go all the way.”
Luminosity favored El Mato, engendering a newfound gentleness. “El tesoro,” the album’s centerpiece, is a sweet love song with the makings of a classic pop tune. A detailed melodic and instrumental work sets the song apart from anything the band had done before. “The lyrics had to grow with the music,” Barrionuevo conceded to Red Bull’s website. Forgoing the repetition of simple phrases, “El tesoro” is structured like a series of flirtatious apologies that dissolves into mellowed-out acceptance.
El Mato’s search for cutting sonic clarity paid off. Rolling Stone claimed the album broke out of the indie confines with hi-fi love songs that could stand toe to toe with radio-friendly Argentinian rock. Igarzábal, the music critic who wrote a book on the 2010s independent rock movement, agreed. There was before and after La síntesis O’Konor. It bookended the rise of La Plata’s indie scene and the regeneration of Argentina’s underground.
The slow boil that took El Mato from dilapidated bars to international stages exploded in 2017. Within weeks, the band went from playing venues with capacity in the low hundreds to selling out thousands of seats for several nights in a row. Radio stations across Latin America had La síntesis O’Konor on heavy rotation. Dozens of magazines chose the album among the best of the year. A Latin Grammy nomination capped a surreal year.
Attempting to metabolize the shock, El Mato began performing in near-total darkness. Gone were the sci-fi movie scenes that once lit up its shows. The band preferred to appear in silhouette. It was not only an impulse to disappear from the sudden upswell of attention; El Mato expected to become a vessel for the crowd.
Despite its enormous success, La síntesis O’Konor was anything but a capitulation to the mainstream. El Mato had transcended any sound or scene. Elevated to unimagined popularity, the band continued to live by its ideals: finding yourself through creation and nurturing friendships. “We had this romantic fantasy that you can do things your way—with your friends, when and how you wanted. It slowly became possible,” Barrionuevo said to Muzikalia. In twenty years, El Mato had transformed into a beacon of resilience and freedom, offering hope through its example. Thus, more than an extraordinary pop reinvention, La síntesis O’Konor proved that you could change the world around you with courage and conviction.
A Celebration of Fire
In the aftermath of La síntesis O’Konor, the musicians of El Mato had to get used to a paradoxical new role: part upcoming radio sensation, part elder statesmen of the underground. That often put them on unfamiliar ground. Walking the Grammy red carpet in Las Vegas was so alien to Barrionuevo that he almost bailed to grab some fast food. Months later, at Cosquín Rock, Argentina’s largest music festival and a bastion of rock conservatism, they performed next to corporate acts and graying legends—a lineup they might have once opposed as outsiders.
Beyond those massive spotlights, El Mato continued inspiring admiration in DIY circles. In 2017, four high school friends from Madrid formed Carolina Durante. With lyrics about drifting through early adulthood and melodies designed for massive singalongs, Carolina Durante struck a chord with an audience hungry for connection. It was no surprise that Carolina Durante played El Mato covers before they had any songs of their own and later immortalized its fandom in “Las canciones de Juanita,” calling the Argentinians the soundtracks of their lives.
The underground in Argentina dealt with El Mato’s outsized influence. In La Plata, the next generation of indie bands first tried to avoid the group’s shadow. Linxes, a post-pop duet blending rock guitars and synthetic textures, bet on elaborate performances and ambitious stagecraft in contrast to the slacker-like nonchalance of their Laptra predecessors. In time, they recognized a sense of continuity. “Our relationship with El Mato has evolved,” admitted Danny Brichetti of Linxes. “Today, they represent an example of a hardworking independent project. Seeing how they made so many incredible things happen is a huge motivation. They are great La Plata representatives.”
Having weathered a couple of years of destabilizing popular attention, El Mato continued to roam the world. In 2024, it played a massive outdoor concert at El Zócalo, Mexico City’s storied main square. The sprawling space, flanked by Aztec temples and Mexico’s government palace, was just one stop in its fifty-two-date international tour: a staggering achievement for musicians who were no strangers to spending nights in rat-infested truck stops and continued to self-release their music two decades into their career. “My childhood dream was to play in a bar. Anything that came after is extra,” Sánchez quipped, talking to La Gaceta.
“People used to assume we would stay independent until we found a contract,” Barrionuevo told Muzikalia. “We had a different vision—a crazier, stranger path. We wanted to be independent, and we still are.” Mainstream success did not separate El Mató from its DIY ideals. Fans and fellow musicians admired the authenticity underpinning the journey. Roberto Aleandri, who met the band in the early days and joined Laptra with Atrás Hay Truenos, captured its enduring impact: “They taught me to be powerful with what I have. To be powerful with little.”
El Mato has always closed its albums with fire. From “Prenderte fuego” on its 2004 self-titled debut to “El profeta del fuego” on 2023’s Súper terror, flames have represented the final judgment, purification, and the dying embers of a broken romance. The motif is as malleable as the band. Fire came out of the gun that shot a motorcycle cop. Fire took the life of rock chabón fans and brought the reckoning of Argentinian underground music. Fire ravaged the streets of Buenos Aires when an economic crisis threatened to destroy the country. Fire marked the beginning and was present when the band reached its twentieth anniversary.
In December 2024, El Mato celebrated that milestone by playing its first album in full. The run of shows in Buenos Aires and La Plata was a rare bout of nostalgia, though not a retreat. The night El Mato found its name, the band traded the flat hum of a television set for the crackle of a guitar amp. Two decades later, the five friends walked into the yellow glimmer of stadium floodlights with the same excitement of their suburban living-room jams. They stood at another threshold, the faces of the crowd flickering in darkness. As the first notes rang out, the band shed all the signs of time to renew its foundational pledge: you can do things your way; there is nothing to fear when friends are with you; music is an infallible shelter. El Mato stepped forward—into the fire, one more night. 
Javier A. Rodríguez-Camacho is a Bolivian writer based in Colombia. In 2009 he was named “Next Great Rock Critic” by Crawdaddy! magazine. His byline has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Pitchfork, Spin, and Rockdelux. He is the author of Testigos del fin del mundo (Rey Naranjo, 2023), a retrospective of Latin independent music in the 2010s.
Photo: Carlos Riobueno
