Eva LeBlanc has always been direct. Those closest to the Chilean artist have often noticed this trait of bold naivety she jokingly tells me over Zoom from her London home. “My friends and my partner will say, ‘You’re not shy. You just go and ask people for stuff,’ and I’m like yeah why not.”
Why not indeed, as when LeBlanc decided she wanted to work with her hero Penny Rimbaud, co-founder of the legendary anarcho punk band Crass, she simply messaged him on X (formerly Twitter). “I gave my Bandcamp [and said] I would love to do something with you,” LeBlanc recalls. “I never heard back for a month and then he messaged me after and said, ‘I like your music, let’s hang out’.”
Through this rare positive interaction on the otherwise wasteland of a social media platform, in 2024 LeBlanc found herself being brought in to collaborate with fellow Crass band member Eve Libertine for a performance at a Crass exhibition at London’s Horse Hospital. While the project covered a selection of classic Crass songs, this was no nostalgia-fuelled romp through the past. Instead, Libertine and LeBlanc (with help from Rimbaud) unravel and expand on Crass’ back catalogue. In their reinterpretations Libertine spits out furious poetic verses, while LeBlanc flitters between buzzsaw guitars, piercing feedback, and curiously selected samples.
Their avant garde approach was conceived during rehearsal where LeBlanc limited her guitar sound to just two pedals – distortion and delay. “I think that gives a bit more freedom, because you need to explore more by the sounds, how you play and the intention of playing it,” LeBlanc explains, discussing her approach to the project. “So instead of having 10 pedals where you can do a thousand different sounds, let’s keep it punk, let’s keep it simple.”
The collaboration resulted in the album Live at the Horse Hospital, released in November 2025 on Rimbaud’s Caliban Records. If that were the only accomplishment LeBlanc had last year it would be enough to intrigue, but she had already picked up on The Quietus’ radar thanks to her London-based hardcore group, Traidora.
Traidora began as a solo project in 2023, a few years after LeBlanc transitioned, and is deeply informed by her identity as an immigrant and trans woman. “I think [my personal experience] was something I was missing a lot in music,” LeBlanc told me, explaining that she couldn’t find many hardcore songs about trans identity from trans people.
Influenced by fellow Latin American punk bands like Los Crudos and Limp Wrist, LeBlanc sings entirely in her first language, Spanish. In 2023, she released the seven-track demo, Un Cuerpo Trans Lleno De Odio, which translates to ‘a trans body full of hate’. The demo was raw and brash, featuring LeBlanc solely backed by buzzsaw guitars and electronic drums.
By the time of Traidora’s 2025 debut LP Una Mujer Trans Sin País – which translates to ‘a trans woman without a country’ – the band had expanded to a four-piece, featuring Charley on bass, Lucian on drums, and Lyn on guitar. Released on the London-based underground punk label La Vida En Mus, the album scurries along at speed punk pace at times, delivering chaotic fury at its finest.
Throughout the album LeBlanc spits out the lyrics with such ferocity you can practically hear the spittle hitting the microphone. Her power is demonstrated clearly on songs like ‘Dime algo que valga la pena’, which tackles the bleak realities of mortality or ‘Disforia Eterna’ where she screams to be heard over battle cry gang vocals and rousing, stadium worthy guitar riffs.
Some song introductions occasionally tease other genres (for a moment ‘Río Arriba Quema El Sol’ invokes late ‘90s hip hop beats), but for the most part, Traidora adheres to the hardcore punk ethos. It’s the kind of music that could easily convince you that you could kick down a steel door and feel no pain.
While it would be reductive to suggest Traidora is purely a reflection of LeBlanc’s life, there is a sizeable biographical element to her lyrics, and this is purposeful. LeBlanc’s journey began back in Venezuela where she was born in 1982 to Chilean parents who fled the Pinochet dictatorship.
By 1989, the Pinochet dictatorship had fallen so the family moved back to Chile, settling in the capital Santiago first before moving to the smaller city Chillán. Missing her school, her friends, and the warm beaches in Venezuela, LeBlanc struggled with the move until she discovered punk as a teenager. She formed a band, learnt how to record songs, and started hosting DIY shows at the local community centre for her friends.
Punk continued to be the backbone of her life until it took an abrupt backseat for a few years in a twenties while she tried to figure things out. “I was navigating my gender expression and I felt I couldn’t make it in the punk community because I was a bit like, ‘I don’t know how that works’”, she tells me. Bored with her life and feeling like there was little else she could do in Chile, a decade ago at 32 years old LeBlanc took the opportunity to move to Europe, eventually settling in the UK.
As an immigrant in the UK at a time when anti-migrant attitudes are high, LeBlanc’s choice to sing in her first language feels like a direct political statement. Her choice has helped her connect more with the Latin American diaspora and Spanish speaking communities in Europe. English fans aren’t kept in the dark though, as the band hand out lyric sheets with translations at every gig, which has helped Traidora function as a kind of punk Duolingo. “I’ve had really good feedback from English speakers,” LeBlanc admits. “People message me and say, ‘I listened to your records, I’m a trans, queer, an immigrant. Thank you for the lyrics, I connect with them’.”
Her lyrics speak to real world problems and ongoing political issues, touching on everything from gender dysmorphia, Palestine, Chilean leftist activism, and migrant struggles. As a band Traidora don’t shy away for letting their politics be known outside of their music as well. “What we try to do is put on fundraiser gigs,” LeBlanc says, outlining their ethos as a band, “or invite activist stalls to give information about different fights, from Palestine or South American indigenous issues. That’s something we can do and really makes a difference sometimes.”
Thanks to the burgeoning UK queer punk scene with collectives like 0121 Queercore in Birmingham and bands like Gender Warfare in London, Traidora are firmly part of a queer community that LeBlanc was originally searching for. It is a reality LeBlanc is stunned to witness. “I feel [the queer punk scene] has been growing really well,” LeBlanc gushes, explaining that they’ve seen a huge growth in queer punk bands and the crowds coming to shows. “We did this record release show in October [2025] at New River Studio and there were all these different queer bands from different cities in attendance.”
At a time when immigrants are scapegoated as some inherent, constant threat to British life, and queer identity is forever a focus of the right-wing propaganda machine, to have a space where people can escape, even for one night, is a radical act.
“Sometimes I question myself, that I need to do something more political,” LeBlanc ponders, “but at the end of the day, talking with my friends it’s like what we’re doing now is really political. A lot of people need a space where everyone accepts you and that might happen at a Traidora gig.
“If you’re queer, you’re trans, if you’re young especially, people know already they will come to a Traidora gig and feel safe,” LeBlanc continues. “If something happens, we will help. It’s an act of resistance what we’re doing as a band.”
Traidora play at Supersonic Festival, which is held in Birmingham 25 & 26 April
