Leonel Valdez

Leonel Valdez — musician — works in the Latin American metal circuit. Latin America has active metal scenes in practically every country, with widely varying characteristics. Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Brazil developed circuits of their own, with settled bands, festivals and audiences — and a particularly strong extreme metal tradition dating back to the 1980s. What these scenes share is the working structure. Across the region, metal operates outside the main record industry, with independent production, direct distribution and live circuits organised by the people who take part in them. It is a model the region developed out of necessity and which has proved remarkably resilient. What separates them is distance. Latin American tours are expensive and logistically hard, and exchange between national scenes is smaller than geographic proximity would suggest. Many bands in the region know the European circuit better than the one in the neighbouring country.