I gave myself the power of keeping you away
Wrapped up in the sounds of the bastion’s coldest waves
I still see you watching me move towards the within
Frankie Diez seems to have reached the useful stage in an artist’s life where embarrassment stops being a factor. Casual Confrontation began on indie-pop ground, but after five albums since 2020, Diez has clearly decided there are worse things than making the music you actually wanted to hear when you were younger, hanging around punk and goth scenes, absorbing whatever seeped in through the walls.
“I’ve always been inspired and involved within the punk, goth, and alternative subcultures, and it’s about time my music began reflecting that,” says Diez.
You can hear that decision all over SCARED OF SILENCE, the second single from Casual Confrontation’s forthcoming album BASTION. Moving deeper into darkwave and coldwave, Diez has hit upon a combination that feels absurdly overdue: reggaeton and those colder electronic forms sound like tenants who have spent years banging on opposite sides of the same wall, only to discover they were keeping time together. The guitars come in with that severe Twin Tribes economy, the bass carries some of Boy Harsher’s nightclub menace, and beneath it sits a rhythm that keeps trying to pull the song somewhere warmer, dirtier, and more physical. Reggaeton reveals repetition as pressure; a dembow rhythm can keep working on you until thought becomes secondary. EBM has spent decades using similar repetition for control, tension, intimidation, and release. Put them together and suddenly the distance between Bad Bunny and Ultra Sunn starts looking much shorter than anyone bothered to admit.
By the second half, the resemblance to Karol G and Tokischa becomes harder to miss. The track loosens at the waist while retaining its colder frame, and that friction gives it personality. Ministry once made metallic percussion feel like a municipal requirement; Diez borrows some of that hard impact and drops it into a song that would rather dance than march.
He has a name for the approach, too: “Reggaeton Gótico,” which sounds at first like the sort of phrase somebody invents at closing time and then regrets by breakfast. Except the music holds up the joke.
Diez explains why with a much simpler answer: “I always listened to reggaeton growing up in both Puerto Rico and in Miami, and the genre fusion always felt natural, since much of reggaeton can easily have somewhat of a dark-clubbing atmosphere already.”
Lyrically, SCARED OF SILENCE continues the story begun in the previous single, ARREBATO, carrying the sense of an unsafe outside world into a more private confrontation. Here, safety means shutting out the person who made the world feel threatening and looking inward for somewhere to stand. Meditative yet fierce, the song casts silence as a way to reclaim power from a toxic dynamic, finding a strange pleasure in no longer owing someone access.
When an argument reaches a point where even explaining becomes exhausting, Silence becomes the final boundary, and the anger behind it settles into deliberate withdrawal. There is control in choosing when the conversation ends, especially when every earlier exchange has left someone else setting the terms. Diez gives that decision room to breathe, treating solitude as a place where the self can begin to take shape again.
One lyric extends that idea across BASTION as a whole: “When the outside space no longer feels safe, I’ll leave here to see what my heart creates.” The line supplies the forthcoming album BASTION’s central premise, with retreat becoming an opportunity to make something from whatever remains beyond another person’s reach.
By the end, the recurring question about silence has changed shape. It sounds almost taunting now, as if Diez already knows the answer and has finally stopped caring whether the other person admits it.
Listen to SCARED OF SILENCE below:
Listen to SCARED OF SILENCE via Spotify or Apple Music and order the single below.
Follow Casual Confrontation:
Or via: