WXPN once wrote, “If lightning bolts were music it’d be
BANGZZ.”
The project began as the stormy brain child of Japanese American songwriter Erika Kobayashi Libero who started recording angry guitar riffs with charged lyrics in her bedroom in 2017. Determined to bring this sound to life, Kobayashi Libero teamed up with drummer, Jess Caesar in 2019 and the duo began tearing through the underground music scene, building a following in their home state of North Carolina and beyond while opening up for notable acts like Screaming Females, The Gories, Wednesday, Mannequin Pussy, Guerilla Toss, The HIRS Collective, and more.
BANGZZʼ sound has been described as “confrontational femme-punk that weds a Stooges stomp to five-alarm-blaze-yelps” and a “brand of punk noir” that is “all scuzzy irreverent riot girl catharsis.” Their first full length album “You Took My Body Long Ago and Now I am Taking it Back” released on North Carolina label, Potluck Foundation, was hailed by INDY Week as “one of the most exciting full-length Triangle debuts to emerge out of the muck of 2021.”
