By Patty G.

In a city stacked with rock bands, metal lifers and hardcore staples, La Discordia feels slightly out of step, in the best way possible. They deal in garage-soaked, psych-leaning rock and roll with a punk backbone.

The quartet — Jose Perez Castaneda (guitar/vocals), Luis Trejo (organ/vocals), Pato Delfin (bass/vocals) and Salvador Rodriguez (drums/vocals) — locked in this current lineup in 2024, though the project had lived a few earlier lives before that. The difference now? Chemistry. The kind you can’t fake and definitely can’t force.

They all ran in the same circles — the same bars, the same shows, the same orbit of punk kids growing up in El Paso. By the time this version of La Discordia solidified, the foundation had already been poured in late-night hangs and shared stages.

We sit in the courtyard of Bye Bye Dear — the former Lowbrow Palace space now owned by Delfin — just before the premiere of their new video “Ya No Puedes Mas” on a Tuesday night. There’s movement inside. It feels like something is about to happen.

As the conversation rolls on, it becomes obvious: no single spokesman, no ego jockeying. They talk over each other in the warm way old friends do. They finish each other’s thoughts. Even their fashion feels cohesive. They are a well-thought-out band that just works.

“As a band, we all just kind of feed off each other — we’re friends,” Trejo says of their chemistry. “If you’re a person who is open to ideas and you work with the right people and you work on the same mission, you know, that’s always like, the best thing. But luckily, we’re all friends, and that’s a big, big deal. … When you create things together, you can give people a certain feeling. It’s just, it’s magic. It really is. The four of us together, it’s magic.”

And he’s right.

La Discordia first caught my ear on a random night at Mona in 2024. No plan. No entourage. Just a need to feel live music vibrate through my ribs. Every band that night brought it. But La Discordia? Magic. I was pulling out my phone and looking them up before I even made it back to my car.

There’s something they’ve tapped into that feels rare in El Paso right now. Yes, they’re rock en español. Yes, they lean punk. Yes, there’s garage grit and psych shimmer. But none of those tags fully land. They don’t explain what happens when they’re onstage, because live is where it clicks.

“When we play live, it’s really good,” Perez Castaneda says. “One of us can mess up but we all know how to read each other.”

He continues: “We are just clashing together. If we mess up, we come back in and that’s like a perfect beat to have as a band.”

They don’t aim to be background noise. They measure a set by who’s dancing, especially the serious guy in the back with his arms crossed. They’ll crash into each other musically and snap back in time without missing the pulse. The friction is part of the design.

“I injure my neck every show because we play so hard,” Trejo says.

That urgency is front and center on their latest single, “Ya No Puedo Más.” Written in five minutes before rehearsal, the track bleeds raw heartbreak: direct, unpolished, no ornamental fluff. It distills what they do best: stacking vocals, letting the organ shimmer under sheets of distortion, then pushing everything straight into the red.

That’s what makes it Rodriguez’s favorite to play. “It’s just the energy that it carries. Everyone has their own little solo, you know?”

Sonically, the single marks a shift. Earlier recordings were tracked differently. This time they stepped into a more traditional studio setup with their friend Fernie, who treated production less like a rulebook and more like a creative partnership. The result still feels gritty, just sharpened at the edges.

The video, directed by their friend Mark Martinez, mirrors that evolution. Shot on RED cameras, it captures La Discordia in pure performance mode: smoke curling through saturated light, amps humming, bodies moving. No storyline. No overthinking. Just the band, locked in.

And they’re not slowing down. The weekend after the premiere, they’re Austin-bound — a city they call the “motherland” of psych and garage rock — with plans to record more material with Hugo Vargas, an El Paso native tied to Austin’s Electric Church collective. They talk about pressing their music to vinyl one day. About touring beyond Texas. About maybe — just maybe — playing the Cavern Club in the UK, where The Beatles played.

Still, for all that ambition, they’re grounded. The name La Discordia translates roughly to “discord” or “disagreement,” Perez Castaneda says, explaining that it comes from a song from a band that filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar played in. It’s a biblical term, though they’re quick to clarify it’s not religious. If anything, it represents tension. Friction. A refusal to settle into comfort. It fits.

“We try to give people a soundscape to escape from, like a bad night or a bad week,” Trejo says. “The goal as an artist … is to inspire other people to create art, give room to say, like, ‘oh, you could do it too, you know?’”

Maybe El Paso doesn’t have many bands leaning this hard into fuzzed-out psych punk at the moment. But La Discordia isn’t waiting for a movement to arrive. They’re building one themselves — loud, imperfect and unapologetic.

“You say a band plays rock and roll nowadays, and it seems like, ‘Oh, that’s so antiquated.’ Or, you know, it’s like, ‘that’s not rebellious, you know?’” Delfin says. “Rebellion is every other type of genre, right? But rock and roll will always be the No. 1 root of all rebellion, and we try to embrace that.” 

On the night of the video release, Delfin is in constant motion — venue owner brain switched on — checking corners, greeting guests, making sure everything runs smooth. The rest of the band splits time between handshakes and nervous pacing. They’re hosting, but they’re also vulnerable. There’s that flicker in their eyes — anxious, excited — the particular electricity that comes with showing your work to anybody.

And when the lights dim and their faces glow against the screen, you can feel it: this isn’t just a video drop. It’s four friends betting on each other in public.

That chaos. That communion. That’s the real thing.

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