Anarchist icon and diva of destruction, Roxy Riot is one of the faces of the thrasher movement in Angel City. When she takes the stage, the mosh pit turns into a battlefield and Angel City’s foundations shake.

Roxy was born to a poor family in the slums. Her father was an abusive alcoholic who beat the shit out of her and her Mom on a regular basis. After watching him put her Mom into the hospital, Roxy realized that she would have to learn how to fight back if she wanted to survive.

She started picking fights in school to practice.  She started with kids her size and slowly worked her way up to bigger and stronger ones. She got her ass kicked a lot, but she always got back up stronger.

While she was a poor student in almost every other subject, she found a deep connection to music in her teenage years. She used to stay late in the music room after school screaming and beating the drum kit as loud as she could before going home to face her Dad.

One day, after her Dad came home from another bender, he started a fight with her Mom. He knocked her down and started to beat her senseless. Watching him beating her defenseless mother, something snapped in Roxy. She grabbed a pair of brass knuckles she had bought at school and flew at her Dad with pure unleashed rage. She caught him by surprise and knocked him to the ground. She beat him into the floor with every ounce of fury and hatred she had bottled up her entire life. When she finally regained control, she realized he was dead. In a panic, she ran out of their apartment and never looked back. She would later refer to this as her “Independence Day.”

Over the next few years Roxy lived on the streets stealing and scavenging what she could to get by. She started sneaking into underground punk shows and channeling her rage into the mosh pit. 

At one particularly violent show, Roxy met a man named Kell in the pit and they bonded over their mutual love of the band. After the show he told her he was the bassist of a band and invited her to come to one of their shows. She started going to their shows regularly and hanging around during practices.

Eventually her and Kell started jamming together and started a band of their own. They called themselves Violent Heat Death. Roxy was able to channel her rage and frustrations through her music and after playing a few open mics, they caught the attention of a manager who booked them on their first paid gig.

Roxy was absolutely electric on stage. She went into a fugue state every night pouring years of trauma and anger out into every performance. She had a natural gift for getting the crowd worked into a frenzy and word about Violent Heat Death spread through the underground music scene.

After one of their biggest shows, Kell didn’t show up for practice. They later found out that he had been killed by an ACPD officer who he had gotten into a fight with.

Roxy was devastated by his murder and furious at the injustice of it. This was a turning point for her as a songwriter. Her music started getting more and more political and anti-authoritarian. They found a new bassist and launched a tour in honor of their fallen friend which they called The Vengeance tour. 

This tour would go on to be one of the formative moments in the thrasher movement. The energy was explosive and several shows ended as violent riots that took to the streets. During this tour, Roxy began to understand the power she had to focus the growing rage over the injustices in Angel City and undermine the systems of power that perpetuated these injustices. The Vengeance tour would cement Roxy as one of the leaders of the thrasher movement and forever change the landscape of the music scene in Angel City.