With the industrial melodic death metal sound on their 2025 album ‘Into the Detriment’, Collateral Detriment has delivered quite a unique work within the Venezuelan extreme metal movement. Moreover, their live shows and visuals are clearly there to enhance the dystopian themes covered in their lyrics. Bassist Gabriel Pelusso tells us more about Collateral Detriment and the state of the Venezuelan metal scene.

“Valencia is where I’m from”, Pelusso says. “Here in Venezuela, Valencia is known as the rock capital of the country. It has been for a number of years. But to be completely honest, I don’t know if that is actually true. That is not meant to criticize Valencia, but there are a lot of cities with a great scene, like Barquisimeto, Caracas, and the east of the country, like in Puerto Ordaz. Really, I think there is a lot of talent all over the country, and it’s not just concentrated here in Valencia.

Having said that, there are a lot of bands in Valencia, and we have a lot of people who listen to rock and metal music here. So obviously, this is a very important city for rock and metal music. But I don’t know if it’s justified to talk about it like it’s the only city that has a worthy scene. All territories of Venezuela have a lot of rock and metal fans, and that I think that’s a great thing.”

Artists in All Genres

“I started playing music in the beginning of 2000. Since then I have played with a lot of bands in this city. But I have been interested in music since I was a little child, listening to all kinds of different genres, and just a lot of music in general. Apart from the talent that we have in the country, one thing I like about Venezuelan musicians is that we have artists in all genres. People can listen to traditional heavy metal one day, extreme death metal the other day, and another day, they listen to rock music. People here are very open to all genres. I have been one of them.

When I started playing the bass, my primary influence on my playing were my friends. Honestly, I can sit here listing all kinds of bands and international musicians who have been sources of inspiration, but I have to tell you the truth. My primary influences in my life as a musician are my friends. You are always learning about your sound talking about the instrument, talking about music, talking about all there is to playing music and listening to music.

I know how to play guitar, but I really love the bass. I’m not going to be using any other instrument, because I love this instrument. Obviously, I have learned to play other instruments. Sometimes I play a bit of guitar, but the instrument I love the most and that I can bring the love of my soul to has always been the bass.

It’s very, very difficult here in Venezuela to find a good bass. We have to deal with a difficult economic situation – not only in Venezuela, but in all of Latin America. It’s difficult to make enough money to buy a good instrument. You can do it, with a lot of effort, working and saving enough money in order to buy a good, representative instrument, but not everybody has the opportunity. I have been lucky to find the Jackson bass with active pick-ups that I play now. I really like the sound, and fell in love with that instrument.”

The Song Starts Talking

“The principal creators of this project are both of our guitarists: Alexis Mudarra and Jonnathan González. They created Collateral Detriment back in 2016. I have been with the band for three years; I joined in 2022. Then, our keyboard player Abfreddy ‘A/B’ Sánchez joined the band, and our new drummer Luís Fraíno was the last one to join the band.

Both Alex and John put the basic outlines of the ideas for a new song on the table, and then, we are encouraged to create our own lines. It’s kind of nice that they don’t decide anything about the parts we play, and they just let us do our jobs. All they say is that we have to make it our own. Then we start playing the songs together in the studio. Sometimes, we give them some new ideas that we think fit the songs while we are playing.

What’s good about Collateral Detriment is that nobody is closed off to the ideas of the other members of the band. If someone has an idea that we think is worth trying out, everybody just says: yes, let’s try it! Let’s see what will happen here. As for my parts, the song just starts talking to me: this is how I want to sound. And then I have to come up with a line that makes the song sound like it wants to sound. It’s not really something I think about a lot; it’s just something that comes along as part of the process.

These last three years, we have done a lot of things. Playing at festivals, sharing the stage with international bands like Crypta from Brazil, participating in TV shows like Kultura Rock with Paul Gillman. Apart from doing all these things, the response to our new album ‘Into the Detriment’ was amazing. We have put a lot of work into making that album, so we are happy it has been received this well.”

Noise Like There Were Twenty

“We can say that I’m a little bit well-known in this city, as a bassist at least, because I played with a lot of bands that had a lot of shows in this city. I played with an old school thrash metal band called Oldskull. We were a power trio: guitar, bass and drums. But we made noise like there were twenty of us, haha! We played in a lot of cities, sometimes with international bands, like Violator from Brazil or Lujuria from Spain.

Then, I joined a Spanish-language hardcore band named ID Hardcore. Unbelievable musicians. It was great to play with those bands. Then came the time that Collateral Detriment needed a new bassist in the band, and a mutual acquaintance of ours told them: well, Gabriel Pelusso is not doing anything at the moment, haha!

The first Collateral Detriment songs I heard were ‘Cyber Control’ and ‘Altered for Genocide’. I totally love this sound that they have. So when they called me, I immediately said: yes, let’s do it! Since then A/B also brought a lot of influences from industrial music with him. That’s part of his job in the band now, and his playing style. Some bands look at certain international bands and say: we want to sound like that! We don’t actually have that at all, haha!”

The Domination of Technlogy

“We want our live shows to make us look like the most professional band as we can possibly be. Making our shows look like we want them to look requires a lot of preparation, because it’s more than just good music. We want to let you get into the right visual environment as well.

We use a lot of lights, a lot of video content in the back, and we are using the performance to enhance the story that’s being told in the lyrics. We are talking about things that can happen in the future, like the domination of technology in society. Obviously, we have to visualize something like that while we play the songs as well.

All we need to do that is a stage that is big enough for all the show elements that we offer. Fortunately, there are several things that we can bring to the show. We have the lights, we have the smoke machines, we have a screen we can put up behind us, we have our own digital mixing console… But the most important thing if we want to play anywhere, is that we have enough space to put all those things somewhere. If it’s a smaller stage, we can’t put down everything.

So yeah, even though we are singing about the domination of technology, obviously, we try to use all the technology we have at hand, haha!”

Improving Live Shows

“At the moment, we want to improve our live show first of all. We want to produce another video clip as well, and I think we are going to start making one in January. After that, we have a lot of things in mind. We want to record some live shows in the studio. And maybe after that, we are going to record a few new singles. We have been working a lot in the studio to improve our show, and the material for our shows.

Deciding which bands we play with is sometimes the decision of the producers who book the shows, but we have a lot of bands that we are close with. Artificial from Barquisimeto is a band that we are friends with. There is a DJ that plays techno music from Caracas, Bioraven, and he is also a very good friend. We support a band called Miserihum a lot. They are a really good band.

There are a lot of bands here. Like I said: we have a lot of talent in Venezuela. I worked in other countries, like Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, and it really is something different here. We have a pretty big extreme metal scene, as well as a traditional heavy metal scene here in Venezuela, whereas in other countries, more mainstream rock music is dominating.”