The Warning drummer Pau Villarreal faints onstage, band cancels festival show

The Warning canceled its Rock Werchter appearance after Paulina “Pau” Villarreal Vélez fainted onstage in Münster, Germany, cutting short a show that had already forced the band to change the set in real time. Pau went down about 11 songs into the July 1 performance at Skaters Palace, during “DISCIPLE,” and the band paused before returning for two acoustic songs without her.

The speed of the fallout mattered as much as the collapse itself. By July 3, Rock Werchter had pulled The Warning from its NEST-stage slot and replaced the band with Alice Mae for the 22:30 to 23:25 set. The festival said Pau was still ill and needed more time to rest before getting back onstage, turning a single onstage medical scare into a clear touring decision within days.

Pau’s role makes that kind of disruption especially acute. The Warning is the Monterrey, Mexico sister trio of Daniela “Dany” Villarreal Vélez on guitar and lead vocals, Paulina on drums, vocals and piano, and Alejandra “Ale” Villarreal on bass, vocals and piano. Pau is not just holding down the backbeat, she is one of the band’s vocal anchors, which means a health problem can scramble both the rhythm section and the arrangement at once.

That urgency was already visible in the way the band handled the Münster set. Pau had signaled during the show that she was under the weather but was trying to keep going, and the band only pushed ahead until it became clear the night could not continue as planned. For drummers, it is a blunt reminder that the chair is physical labor first and spectacle second, especially in a band where the drummer is also a co-vocalist and part-time keyboard player.

The canceled Werchter show landed in the middle of an active summer run. The Warning’s tour page listed Arras on July 4, Toulouse on July 6, Madrid on July 8 and Lisbon on July 10, 2026, all close enough to make recovery a scheduling issue, not just a personal one. The band, which first drew wider attention in 2014 with a YouTube cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” had released its fourth studio album, Keep Me Fed, on June 28, 2024 through Lava and Republic Records, and Pau’s 2023 Rock Drummer of the Year award from Drumeo only underlined how much of the band’s live identity runs through her playing.