QUEERCORE PUNK DUO Cockeye is know for their riotous live shows, in which Blake Martinez and Joel Lopez hurl one-liners at each other between songs like they’re competing in the Olympics of stage-banter air hockey.
“I feel like now people kind of know what our band’s about—we’re visibly queer, we’re out, we’re loud—so we don’t get booked on as many shows [with] heinous straight bands,” says Martinez. “Maybe that’s where our stage talk came from. Like, 'We’re gonna intimidate you, we’re not gonna be intimidated by you.’”
“The way we interact onstage really came out of a need [to not feel] uncomfortable,” Lopez adds.
Martinez plays guitar, Lopez plays drums, and they both sing. Though they’d played music for years before forming Cockeye, neither had much experience singing or writing lyrics.