A Miss World Chile contestant has found global attention after singing death metal during the competition.
As part of her performance at the nationally televised semifinal on November 2, 27-year-old model Ignacia Fernández growled an original track by her progressive death metal band Decessus.
She was joined by her guitarist Carlos Palma, and the pair quickly made headlines around the world, with outlets in the USA, Australia, Spain and more reporting on the moment.
Fernández is representing Los Condes, a district of her hometown of Santiago, in Miss World Chile 2025. Her death metal singing clearly impressed the judges, as they placed her in the semifinal’s top 20, meaning that she will compete in the grand final on Sunday, November 9. If she wins, Fernández hopes to represent her country in the Miss Universe contest.
After her performance, Fernández gave an interview to Chilean newspaper Las Últimas Noticias, where she admitted she was nervous to perform a death metal song on TV.
“Television lends itself to people making memes and making fun of you,” she said (via Blabbermouth). “The song I sang is by my band. It’s my job, my life.”
She also explained how she takes care of her voice for live performances, saying: “I studied for more than two years, very focused. I have an ENT [ears, nose and throat] specialist and a speech therapist with whom I constantly make sure that everything is okay. I warm up during the day and before a show I take between 15 and 30 minutes to do several exercises calmly.”
Fernández started modelling in 2013 and co-founded Decessus in 2020. The band have shared stages with the likes of Insomnium, Jinjer and Epica. They describe themselves as “one of the most promising emerging acts in Chilean metal”, with music that “explores complex rhythmic structures and aggressive melodic passages”.
Fernández is not the only Chilean metal musician making international waves in 2025. Earlier this year, Metal Hammer interviewed fellow Santiago performers Mawiza, who’ve supported the likes of Slipknot and King Diamond and recently collaborated with Gojira. The band’s music is inspired by their ancestral roots in the Mapuche Nation: an Indigenous South American group who warred with Spanish settlers for hundreds of years.
“We are searching for our own identity within our music,” lead singer Awka Mondaka told us. “Here in Chile, for the Mapuche Nation, it’s difficult to find your identity, because in the Chilean state it’s like, ‘You are all Chilean. There is no Mapuche, there is no Indigenous, there is no identity – just Chile.’”
