Just look away
From her cold smile
I walk away from
The one I admire
Border Goth trio The Slashes stare into the flames with their latest single, I Started A Fire, a song that carries the charge of a band stepping into the room with the lights dimmed yet every nerve twitching awake. From the first seconds, melodic guitars carve out its bleak horizon, while the bass pushes forward with purpose and Esteban Rene’s deep vocals pull the song into a place where desire feels dangerous because it knows exactly what it wants.
The San Diego trio has always drawn from more than one map. The Slashes are shaped by the crosscurrents of border-town air, cold-wave chill, rock en español romance, and the kind of nocturnal rock music that seems to find you when the rest of the city has gone quiet. On I Started A Fire, that blend feels especially sharp. Beto Bautista’s bass gives the track its engine, Carlos Robles keeps the drums upbeat and restless, and the production folds in synth and cello touches that widen the frame without softening the bite.
I Started A Fire follows the collapse into destructive infatuation. The beloved remains emotionally distant, yet the speaker keeps moving closer, surrendering to obsession as both trap and purpose. Love becomes a self-inflicted wound, sparked by the singer’s own hand, until escape begins to lose its appeal. By the end, devotion has taken on the shape of an eclipse: permanent, darkly romantic, and strangely peaceful in its damage.
The rhythm keeps pressing ahead, but the atmosphere around it carries a wound. The guitars have a clean, melodic sting, never overplaying their hand, while the low end gives the track its strut through the darkened streets. Esteban Rene sings like someone who has learned that romance and ruin can walk through the same door. His delivery never sounds detached from the drama. He sounds caught inside it, watching the flames rise and deciding, perhaps too late, that the fire is part of the attraction.
That is the strange charm of The Slashes. They make music for the restless, for the doomed romantics, for the people who discover a band at 2 a.m. and wake up still thinking about them. “I Started A Fire” is sleek, dramatic, and alive with border-goth voltage, a song that turns the ache of wanting someone harmful into something you can dance through before the smoke catches up.
Listen to I STARTED A FIRE below and order the single here.
The Slashes play Soda Bar in San Diego on July 28th.
Follow The Slashes:
Or via: