Erika Libero of BANGZZ stopped by *Live & Local* last week following the release of the band’s second album, *Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s a Trauma Response.*

BANGZZ is a two-person outfit, featuring Libero on guitar and vocals, and Jess Caesar on drums. However, you wouldn’t know it by listening to their music. In just a few short years, they have established themselves as one of the Triangle’s loudest, rawest, and most powerful bands—regardless of size.

This duo dynamic might remind local music fans of another legendary two-piece band, The Flat Duo Jets. But while Dex Romweber of The Flat Duo Jets mined deep veins of rock history for their sound, BANGZZ’s tracks are far more personal.

Libero draws heavily on her own history of trauma and pain to create a hardcore scream of catharsis that is at once angry and joyous, accusatory and affirmational.

“Sometimes it’s easier to think about your feelings when you throw them into art, because then you can look at it outside of your body,” Libero explains. “Sometimes I’m wrapping up thoughts before I know a thousand percent even what I was saying. And then I look at them and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ I think that’s beautiful and surprising about art sometimes: it reveals a lot about who you are.”

So, who is that exactly?

“I’m a mix of who I am on the inside, and a lot of trauma responses, and things I felt like I had to be,” Libero says. The songs on *Maybe She’s Born With It* reflect that mix—they’re a response, a reflection, and in some ways, an embrace of what that combination has turned out to be.

“Our first album was about saying ‘no,’” she adds, “but the second album is like, now that I’ve said ‘no’ to the stuff I’m rejecting, what’s left? Who am I, now that I know these parts were me trying to survive? And seeing that for the first time is magical.”

Erika Libero stopped by *Live & Local* to discuss the album and perform three tracks: “Stuck,” “Walking in Dreams,” and “Trauma Response.”

Listen to the album and purchase it on Bandcamp.

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