There’s a particular kind of urgency that can’t be faked: the kind that comes from lived experience, sharpened straight into sound, and Traidora operate squarely in that space. Fronted by Venezuelan-born trans woman Eva Leblanc and now a full four-piece of queer musicians based in the UK, Traidora channel raw, vicious hardcore punk into something far more vital than catharsis alone. This is music that confronts violence, repression, bigotry and discrimination head-on, a resistance driven by a fury that refuses to be polite or diluted. As Eva told us herself: “Traidora is trying to help trans people to have a platform in the punk community singing about gender, morality, borders and the Mapuche people. We support these struggles with our vicious hardcore punk, sung in Spanish.”
Heavily influenced by Latin American punk forebears like Masacre 68 and Los Crudos, Traidora’s songs hit fast, hard, and without compromise. The eighteen minutes their debut album Una Mujer Trans Sin País lasts can feel like a lifetime when every second is charged with so much conviction. Singing in Spanish only amplifies the intensity – even if you don’t understand every word, you’ll feel exactly what’s being communicated. Traidora are not observers, nor are they interested in empathy at a safe distance. This is confrontation as survival, music as refusal.
– José Carlos Santos
