Guadalajara’s Ladrones fuse nu-metal, reggaeton and regional Mexican music on ‘No Que No,’ the closing track from their Rise Records debut ‘Arriba La L’
Ladrones have spent the last two years proving that a nine-string guitar, a trap beat, and a corrido can share the same three minutes without any of them backing down. “No Que No,” the Guadalajara group’s new single and Abraham Recio-directed video, is the loudest argument yet. Released July 24 via Rise Records, it fuses hard rock and metal, reggaeton, and regional Mexican music into a single defiant anthem, and it will close out Arriba La L, the band’s third album and major-label debut, due August 28.
The song is about standing your ground. Vocalists Zxmyr and Cirujano Resendez trade lines about health, family, money, and respect, warning off anyone who mistakes them for easy targets. “Que nunca falte la salud, familia ni billete,” they open, before the boast turns to a challenge: they will show you how it’s done, so you learn some respect. Driven by electric guitars, pounding drums, and an infectious reggaeton pulse, it carries the cinematic, larger-than-life swagger the band has built its name on, the kind of track that demands sunglasses, a leather jacket, and an open road.
Flow Pesado, Made Literal
What Ladrones do has a name, and it is theirs. The band calls their sound Flow Pesado, heavy flow, and it is a genuine fusion rather than a genre costume change between verses. Formed in 2021 by producer Alan Ledesma of the independent Alzada label, the four-piece, Zxmyr, Resendez, guitarist José Macario, and drummer Diego Zornoza, sing entirely in Spanish and build their songs on nine-string guitars, giving the metal end of their sound a low, djent-adjacent weight while the vocals move fluidly between rapping and melody.
“No Que No” is a showcase for that range. Reviewers have singled out Macario’s Polyphia-adjacent lead work, the reggaeton groove underneath, and a final-stretch swerve into a brutally slow half-time breakdown, the sound, as one writer put it, of a reggaeton track falling through the dance floor straight into a mosh pit. It is the closing statement of an album that has functioned as a victory lap, and it goes for broke in its last thirty seconds.
From Alzada to Rise Records
The bigger story is the graduation. Ladrones released their debut Flow Pesado independently through Alzada in 2024, toured Mexico on the strength of it, and have now signed to Rise Records, the American label home to a deep roster of heavy acts, for Arriba La L. That move places a Spanish-language, regional-Mexican-inflected metal band on one of the genre’s most visible Western imprints, at exactly the moment corridos tumbados and Música Mexicana are dominating global Latin charts. Ladrones approach that convergence from the opposite direction, dragging metal toward the corrido rather than the other way around.
The timing is backed by real momentum. The band tours Mexico through August, with dates in Monterrey, Saltillo, Guadalajara, and Mexico City around the album release, then joins Texan tech-rock favorites Polyphia on a US and Canada tour in the fall. They have also been tapped for Deftones’ annual Dia de los Deftones festival at San Diego’s Petco Park on November 7, a co-sign from one of the most respected names in heavy music. For a band that sings entirely in Spanish and refuses to pick a lane, that is about as strong a set of endorsements as the scene offers. “No Que No” is the sound of Ladrones betting that they do not have to choose, and winning.
