Punk and metal venues don’t usually stay pretty for very long. Heavy riffs spawn a lot of crowd movement, which leads to holes in walls, chipped paint, and various broken objects. Thankfully for Cory’s Grilled Cheese owner Cory Schwartz, one of the bands that frequents his stage, TraumaxQueen, is teaming up with show coordinator Ethan Slaughter to give back with a benefit concert.
“The past couple months, [his venue’s] been having a lot more damages than normal,” says Slaughter. “People are sorry for it and they offer to pay for it, but he won’t take their money … we wanted to give back to him.”
And, while Cory’s Grilled Cheese moonlights as a venue, its primary gig is as a restaurant, so keeping the place presentable is pertinent. TraumaxQueen is using this event, and all of their shows for that matter, as an opportunity to give female metal and punk fans a place to enjoy the music free of judgement.
“To see them feel comfortable and be active is amazing to me,” says lead singer Molli Silvers. “A lot of people have come to me and have been thankful that I put what I put out there, because they thought they would never be able to say it themselves.” Much of TraumaxQueen’s subject matter deals with rape (“Test Me”), drugs (“Smack”), and other topics that deserve an outlet as aggressive as crossover. At most metal and hardcore shows, female participation is low, but at the average TraumaxQueen concert, women are just as active as the guys. “At our second show, there were a ton of girls in the [mosh] pit.”
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