Pink Paradox and Elvira Metal Band join forces to reinterpret the haunting legend of La Llorona, blending nu-metal aggression, gothic atmosphere, and dark storytelling into a powerful collaboration.
1. For
Rosa Thorn (Pink Paradox): La Llorona is a tragic and terrifying figure whose
story has been told for generations. What first attracted you to this legend,
and why did you feel it was the right story to explore through Pink Paradox’s
music?
Rosa: I
can’t stop thinking about her. A woman gets left, she breaks, she does the
worst thing a mother can do, and for five hundred years she’s only been the
ghost people use to scare kids. Everyone tells her story as a warning, and
nobody tells it as hers. That’s what got me. Pink Paradox has always written
about people the world decided were the problem, so she fit right in with us.
It’s also a proper horror story, and I’d wanted to write one of those for a
long time.
2. For
Sofia Ekström (Elvira Metal Band): Your music is built around fictional worlds,
detailed lore, and recurring story arcs. How did you approach La Llorona, a
legend rooted in Mexican folklore, and how did you adapt it to fit Elvira Metal
Band’s artistic universe?
Sofia: You
are spot on! My project Elvira is rooted in deep lore, usually set in a heroic
fantasy world or dark vampire stories. When Rosa shared her song of La Llorona,
I knew immediately it would be a perfect fit for my passion for storytelling.
The dark atmosphere and dramatic story were a perfect match! I actually didn’t
try, nor did I intend, to make it fit into my existing world. This is more of a
side story, inviting the viewer to discover this dark tale... A perfect match
for the Halloween season!!
3. For
Both Bands: La Llorona brings together two distinct musical identities: Pink
Paradox’s nu-metal aggression and Elvira’s gothic and symphonic atmosphere. How
did you find the right balance between these different sounds while making sure
both bands retained their identity?
Sofia: Actually,
that was the most difficult part of the whole project (lol). The original
version Rosa sent me was very rock-oriented. I needed to adapt it and add some
screams and death metal vibes to make it fit my style better. I had to send at
least 20 versions to her until she finally accepted one... lol... Rosa... I
hate you.... loooooool
Rosa: Twenty
versions? Sofia’s being nice, I think it was closer to twenty-five! My first
draft was very rock, she’s right about that, and she pulled it somewhere much
darker with her screams and her death metal side. I kept sending it back
because every version got better, and I wanted the one where you couldn’t tell
where Pink Paradox stopped and Elvira started. We got there. Sofia, I love you
too, and I’d make you do it all again!
4. For
Clara Meier (Pink Paradox): The violin is one of Pink Paradox’s defining
elements and plays an important role in your sound. How did you approach your
violin parts for La Llorona, and what did you want them to bring to the song’s
dark and haunting atmosphere?
Clara: Honestly,
I wanted it to be sad before it’s scary. It opens really slow and sad, and then
on the heavier parts I go full Clara, with my usual visceral violin riffs.
Every time her story moves on, there’s a bit of violin leading into the next
part, so I’m kind of the narrator between the verses. And at the end I slow
right down again. After everything that happened to her, it felt wrong to
finish loud.
5. For
Sofia Ekström (Elvira Metal Band): You and Rosa Thorn share vocal duties on
this track. How did you approach the vocal collaboration, and what did you want
the contrast and combination of your two voices to communicate about La
Llorona’s story?
Sofia: When
I heard Rosa’s lines sung in Spanish, I immediately knew this would be an
amazing track with a true differentiator. The only thing I had to do was adding
my own personal mark which usually comes with some extensive.. growling... lol
6. For
Rosa Thorn (Pink Paradox): In your statement, you describe La Llorona as a
woman who has been remembered as a monster for centuries, while rarely being
understood as a human being. What aspects of her tragedy did you particularly
want listeners to connect with?
Rosa: That
she wasn’t born a monster. In the song she’s forgotten she killed her children,
and she still calls their names every night without understanding why nobody
answers. I’m not asking anyone to forgive her. I want people to feel how alone
she is, and to ask how a woman ends up there. I know what it’s like when
everyone has already decided you’re the bad one, because that’s how I grew up
in Richmond. People are quick to judge and very slow to ask what actually
happened.
7. For
Both Bands: This collaboration brings together musicians and creative
identities from two different projects. How did the songwriting and recording
process work? Did you exchange ideas from the beginning, or did one band
establish the musical foundation before the other added its elements?
Rosa: Sofia
slid into our DMs! Well, sort of. She and Lisa had already been chatting for
ages, mostly in French, so the rest of us had no idea what they were plotting.
Turns out it was this. Sofia asked if we fancied doing a collab, so I sent her
a handful of our songs, and La Llorona was in there, even though I wasn’t sure
about it at all. That song had been haunting us for two years. We kept
reworking it and could never get it to sound the way we heard it in our heads.
Then it
turned into a proper game of ping-pong. Sofia sent back a version with a new
ending and her screams and growls all over it, we reworked our parts around it
and sent it back, she pushed it somewhere darker, we sent it back again, and on
and on. Every round, the song got closer to what we’d been hearing in our heads
for two years, until one day we both listened to the new version and went:
that’s it. So yes, the foundation was ours, but the final version came out of
all that back and forth, and without Sofia it’d still be sitting in a folder
somewhere.
Sofia: Ahah,
that's true. We've been plotting that for ages, but the pink paradox are real
rock stars, these girls are busy as hell!! Ahaha, but we finally made it, and
I'm so happy we did!!
8. For
Sofia Ekström (Elvira Metal Band): Your lyrics are closely connected to the
stories behind your music. When writing La Llorona, how did you approach the
combination of English and Spanish, and what made these two languages important
to telling this particular story?
Rosa: I’ll
take this one, because I wrote most of the lyrics, and I’ve been reworking them
for about two years. Sofia wrote the ending, the part where La Llorona stops
looking for her children and starts looking for someone new, and it’s the
perfect scary closure for the song.
The verses
are in English because they tell the story, and I wanted everyone to be able to
follow it. The chorus is in Spanish because her story has been told in Spanish
for centuries, across Mexico and Latin America, and I wanted to call her by her
name in that language rather than translate it. We also live in Barcelona and
speak Spanish every day, and our first song entirely in Spanish, No Cuentes
Conmigo, came out this summer, so it felt natural to us.
9. For
Rosa Thorn (Pink Paradox): Pink Paradox explores subjects such as heartbreak,
addiction, capitalism, and police violence. La Llorona moves into the territory
of folklore and psychological horror. Does this collaboration represent a new
creative direction for Pink Paradox, or do you see the same darker themes
running through both?
Rosa: Oh,
we’ve been flirting with horror since day one. Our first album, Broken Dolls,
was soaked in it, with songs like Broken Doll and Stitch By Stitch that came
straight out of our love for the goth movie May. We went back there with the
title track of Crown of Thorns and with Second Mouth this summer. It’s our
whole culture! We spend our nights on horror films, we read far too much gothic
literature, and some of us… cough… Lisa… have lost months of our lives dying
over and over in Bloodborne and Dark Souls. Horror says something about the
world that no other genre can.
This year
our songs have been more grounded in real life, and real life has been scarier
than anything we could make up. Kids hurt by police outside their schools,
people working themselves to death, a world that blames the people it breaks.
So going back to a proper ghost story with Sofia felt bloody brilliant. Tales
like La Llorona get passed down as warnings: don’t go near the river, don’t
stay out after dark. They’ve always told the truth too, though, about what
people are capable of doing to each other. That’s why she feels more real than
ever, a woman pushed past breaking point and turned into a monster. Open the
news any day and you’ll find her.
10. For
Both Bands: The music video has a strong
gothic horror atmosphere, portraying both the power of the two bands performing
together and the disturbing tragedy of La Llorona. What was the creative vision
behind the video, and how involved were you in shaping its visual storytelling?
Sofia: Since
I did the visuals, I will answer that one... My creative process is very...
chaotic and uncontrolled.... lol... I usually mass generate images and pick
those I like and I feel would communicate the vibe and vision I want for the
song. Obviously for La LIorona, it had to be mostly a dark environment, forest
at night, abandoned house and farms were a perfect mix. I also like to play a
lot with lights. There is a scene where Clara plays violin all surrounded by
hundreds of candles. It doesn’t make any sense for the story, but it looked
damn beautiful.. lol
Rosa: Sofia
did the visuals, and we trusted her completely. Our job was to turn up in goth
dresses and play along! We’d talked about the mood, dark and gothic, sad first
and frightening by the end, and she ran with it, to make a beautiful and
haunting music video.
11. For
Sofia Ekström (Elvira Metal Band): La Llorona is a story about motherhood,
guilt, loss, and the consequences of terrible actions. Do you think revisiting
traditional legends through metal music can help audiences discover new
perspectives on stories they may already know?
Sofia: Absolutely.
I don’t think there is better music than metal to explore and rediscover dark
stories. I have a whole playlist dedicated to dark vampire stories and La
LIorona is only the first of a series of songs on dark tales from around the
world. Next week I’m releasing Kuchisake-onna, a legend set in Japan with a
scissor mouth cut woman walking alone in the night. If she finds you, she will
ask you if you find her beautiful. If you say yes , she will kill you...
12. For
Both Bands: La Llorona is your first collaboration and brings two different
metal worlds together. Now that you’ve experienced working together, would you
consider joining forces again for another song or even a larger project? What
can fans expect next from Pink Paradox and Elvira Metal Band?
Sofia: Absolutely
not.... LAUGH.... No, of course I would love to!! Rosa has been a real mentor
to me and I treat her a little bit as my big sister... ahahahah
Rosa: Big
sister? Okay, I’m keeping that one. And yes, I’d love to make another song with
Sofia, but next time I want the whole Elvira Metal Band in it. Lisa and Leif on
guitars, Alessia and Elin on bass, Olivia and Varg on drums, all on the same
track. Double everything, and something a lot more brutal than La Llorona.
Sofia, consider this your official invitation! For now, Pink Paradox has Le
Boxeur coming out this Friday the 13th. It’s a metalcore opera sung entirely in
French, about the boxer Christophe Dettinger and the police violence against
kids in France and across Europe right now. And go listen to Sofia’s
Kuchisake-onna next week, it sounds terrifying.
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