Miss World Chile Semifinalist Ignacia Fernández Shocks the Stage with a Death Metal Performance That Redefined What a Beauty Pageant Could Be
When the Miss World Chile 2025 semifinal talent round rolled around, most viewers expected the usual pageant soundtrack: soaring ballads, maybe a bit of pop or traditional dance. Instead, twenty-seven-year-old Ignacia Fernández stepped into the spotlight and quietly prepared to detonate one of the wildest culture clashes in recent pageant history. Representing the affluent Santiago district of Las Condes, the model and musician walked onstage with the composure of a classic beauty queen – but behind that poise was the frontwoman of a progressive death metal band who had zero intention of hiding who she really was.
Visually, the scene was almost surreal. Ignacia wore a floor-length black gown that moved like liquid under the studio lights, her hair and makeup styled to textbook pageant perfection, the white “Las Condes” sash cutting across the dark fabric like a spotlight. Next to her stood guitarist Carlos Palma Morán in matching black, guitar slung low, fingers already hovering near the fretboard. At first glance, it looked like the setup for a brooding pop ballad. The judges settled in, audience members lifted their phones, and Chilevisión’s cameras zoomed tight, ready for something polished and safe. What they got instead was a full-throttle metal assault.
The opening bars of the song immediately announced that this was not borrowed karaoke. Ignacia and Carlos launched into an original track by her own band, Decessus, built on heavy, syncopated grooves and djent-leaning riffs that rumbled through the sound system. Over that thick wall of guitars, she began with an eerie, whispered delivery, pacing the front of the stage like she was casting a spell rather than singing a talent-show number. For a few long seconds, the room seemed unsure how to react – you could almost feel the collective double-take as tuxedoed judges and sequined contestants realized they were watching a death metal performance in the middle of a national beauty pageant.
Then came the turn. As the arrangement intensified, Ignacia abandoned the hushed lines and shifted into full guttural vocals, unleashing the kind of harsh, controlled screams usually reserved for dark club stages and metal festivals. The contrast was almost cinematic: a poised beauty queen exterior paired with a roar that sounded like it could tear down the set. The first wave of audience reaction was stunned silence, captured perfectly on broadcast as people stared with open mouths and raised eyebrows. Within moments, shock melted into adrenaline – cheers rose, phones shot higher into the air, and by the final notes the studio had erupted into a standing ovation that felt less like polite pageant applause and more like a club crowd losing it for a headliner.
Reports from the taping describe judges trading incredulous looks, some laughing in disbelief, others just shaking their heads with that particular mix of “What did I just watch?” and “I kind of loved that.” One member of the panel reportedly admitted he had never seen anything remotely similar on a pageant stage, let alone in such a conservative, high-stakes round of competition. The risk Ignacia took paid off immediately: by the end of the night she had secured a place among the top twenty contestants and punched her ticket to the national final, scheduled for November 9. The message was unmistakable – you could bring brutal metal into one of Chile’s most traditional contests and still be taken seriously.
To understand why the moment resonated so strongly, you have to look at who Ignacia is offstage. Born and raised in Santiago, she began modeling in the early 2010s and spent years doing what pageant fans would recognize as the usual grind: castings, campaigns, runway shows, and the slow process of building a portfolio polished enough to compete on national television. At the same time, she was cultivating a very different identity – one shaped by late-night rehearsals, underground shows, and a deep love for the heaviest corners of metal. For her, Miss World Chile was never supposed to erase that side of her life; it was another stage on which she could decide how fully to show up.
That other life centers on Decessus, the progressive death metal band she founded in 2020. What started as a project between friends has evolved into a serious force: the lineup, including drummer Martín Fénix and bassist Jaime Pepe alongside Ignacia and Carlos, has opened for international names like Jinjer and Epica, toured European festivals, and released a string of singles, most recently “Dark Flames” in 2024. Decessus blend technical riffing with atmospheric passages and brutal vocal work, placing them squarely in the modern progressive death metal lane. For longtime fans, seeing their vocalist march onto a pageant stage in a ball gown was bizarre and thrilling in equal measure – like two separate worlds suddenly colliding on live television.
Ignacia has been open about how deeply metal runs in her life. In a widely shared Instagram post following the broadcast, she described the genre as a refuge and a source of strength, something that helped shape who she is as a person rather than just a hobby she picked up for fun. Stepping onto the Miss World Chile stage with Decessus material was, in her words, a rare chance to bring that private refuge into the brightest of spotlights. She framed the performance as an opportunity to break down barriers on network television, to stand there as a fully herself woman in a world where contestants are often encouraged to smooth out their edges for mass appeal.
That choice carried real risk. In interviews with Chilean media, Ignacia admitted she was nervous not just about the musical demands of the performance but about the internet reaction that would follow. She knew how quickly television moments can be turned into memes and how unforgiving comment sections can be when something doesn’t fit expectations. Putting a guttural scream into a primetime beauty pageant was practically an invitation for jokes. Still, she insisted that performing an original Decessus song was the only option that made sense, emphasizing that this was her work, her career, and her life distilled into a few high-pressure minutes onstage.
Behind the spectacle, there was also a lot of craft. Extreme vocals are physically demanding, and Ignacia has talked about the discipline it took to develop her technique safely. She studied harsh vocal methods intensively for more than two years and continues to work closely with an ENT specialist and a speech therapist to monitor her vocal health. On show days, she warms up in stages throughout the day, then devotes fifteen to thirty calm minutes before going onstage to specific exercises designed to support her range of whispers, growls, and screams. That training allowed her to deliver a truly extreme performance in front of millions without shredding her voice in the process.
Once the episode aired, the internet did exactly what she expected – just not entirely in the way the skeptics might have predicted. Clips of the performance spread across Instagram, TikTok, and X within hours. Some viewers were simply stunned, replaying the now-iconic moment where her voice flips from hushed to monstrous as the camera lingers on a judge’s astonished face. Others celebrated the sheer audacity of bringing full-bore death metal growls to such a polished environment. Comment sections quickly filled with messages from fans calling her “a metal girlie in the pageant world” and pledging their support for Chile in the competition purely because of her performance.
Of course, not everyone loved it. As coverage from international outlets pointed out, the performance sparked heated debate in both pageant and metal communities. Some critics dismissed the moment as a stunt designed to go viral rather than a sincere artistic statement, arguing that the brutality of the vocals clashed with the refined, tradition-heavy atmosphere of Miss World Chile. Memes circulated joking about judges fleeing the building or contestants secretly plotting to bring blast beats into the evening gown portion. Yet that controversy only highlighted the fault lines Ignacia had deliberately stepped on: questions about where “serious” art belongs and who gets to decide what fits a “respectable” stage.
At the same time, her performance fit neatly into a larger conversation about women in metal and what femininity is supposed to look like in public. Supporters hailed her as living proof that you can be impeccably styled, glamorous, and deeply rooted in an extreme music subculture without one cancelling out the other. Social media users applauded her for challenging the idea that pageant contestants must present a soft, polished version of themselves to be considered worthy. For many young women watching – especially those who love heavy music but have been told it is “unfeminine” – seeing a death metal frontwoman command a pageant stage in a gown felt quietly revolutionary.
The ripple effect extended beyond pageant discourse. Decessus saw a fresh wave of attention, with curious viewers tracking down the band’s music videos and live clips after first encountering Ignacia in crown-and-sash mode on their feeds. For Chile’s metal scene, the moment served as a high-profile reminder that the country’s heavy bands are not just thriving in clubs but pushing into spaces that might once have seemed completely closed. Having a progressive death metal project associated with a mainstream pageant broadcast, People-style human-interest coverage, and rock media outlets all at once created a weird but powerful fusion of audiences.
Inside the Miss World Chile organization, the performance also underscored how quickly the image of pageants is evolving. Talent segments have long featured classical musicians, dancers, and pop vocalists, but a contestant roaring over djent-inflected riffs in an evening gown pushes that tradition into new territory. Whether future hopefuls will follow her lead with their own subcultural twists remains to be seen, but Ignacia has set a precedent: authenticity can be a competitive advantage, even when it clashes with expectations. The fact that she advanced to the final rather than being punished for her choice sends a loud signal to future contestants about what kind of risks the judges and producers are willing to reward.
Ultimately, the lasting image from that night is simple but striking: a lone figure in a black gown, sash gleaming, standing center-stage with a microphone as a guitarist carves thick, metallic riffs behind her. The growls that follow are not a joke or a gimmick but the sound of someone refusing to compartmentalize who she is to fit a narrow mold of beauty. In a single performance, Ignacia Fernández managed to turn a national semifinal into a global talking point, not just for the shock value of death metal in a pageant but for the bigger question her performance posed: what happens when women are allowed to bring their whole, loud, complicated selves to even the most traditional of stages? For many viewers, that question – and her fearless answer – is what made the moment unforgettable.
