Photographer Rose Cormier documents where Montreal's music thrives as venues vanish

Rose Cormier (@velours.souterrain) had a choice to make: Crammed into the DIY punk venue Traxide, well beyond capacity, pressed between a stranger's elbow and the edge of a makeshift stage, she could either bail or risk a boot to the face for the perfect shot.

The room was a sweat box and thick with cigarette smoke, as Béton Armé—a band now playing festivals across Europe—thrashed through their set in a space they'd already outgrown.

"I can be such a small, anxious person," Cormier admits with a laugh. "I was like, 'something bad's gonna happen. I'm gonna get kicked in the face.'"

But she stayed anyway, capturing one of those moments in Montreal music history that would never repeat itself again. "Now, nothing scares me anymore," Rose says.

Behind her aesthetic lies a quintessentially Montreal story: A server at Turbo Haüs who transitioned to handling their visuals, a graphic designer for local labels Ambiances Ambiguës and Mothland, and now the vocalist for the noisy 'frog punk' outfit Mulch—a band she started despite, by her own admission, being unable to "count to 4" musically.

But it's Cormier's photography that's become a vital document of Montreal's music scene—underground or above board, it's a community that's simultaneously thriving with creative energy while its physical spaces are increasingly endangered.

In the thick of it

"There are more bands than there has ever been, but there's also more people at these shows than I think have ever been," Cormier says as we look through her feed at images of bodies pressed against low ceilings and stage divers suspended in midair.

The city's underground music community is experiencing a peculiar boom. Big venues' pricing, on average, can be pretty unaffordable for younger audiences, which leads them to discover basement venues and sweaty back rooms where $10 gets you in the door.

Her photos aren't normally shot from the safety of media pits—they're from inside the action, often with a wide-angle lens that still can't capture just how close she is to flying instruments and flailing limbs. The 70s-inspired aesthetic isn't accidental; Cormier's drawn to a more vintage feel and "trying to emulate a 70s nostalgic vibe," as she describes her personal style, carefully calibrated to match the feeling of each show whether it's a hardcore thrash at Casa del Popolo or a more atmospheric set at La Sala Rossa.

While social media's made the once-hidden punk scene more discoverable, Cormier's photos offer something algorithms can't—the raw, unfiltered energy of a community making noise against increasingly difficult odds.

But the bitter irony of Montreal's music ecosystem isn't lost on those documenting it: audience interest has never been stronger, but the physical spaces where that interest materializes are vanishing at an alarming rate.

"It's not so much that the music is dying; it's that the city is making it a lot harder for music to exist," Cormier says, referencing venues like La Tulipe that have shuttered after decades of being a part of the city's cultural DNA. The temporary closure of Champs due to noise complaints is only indicative of a problem that hasn't been fully addressed, let alone solved.

Capture me if you can

The geography of the underground is shrinking, with venues like Turbo Haüs, Foufounes Électriques, and Sala Rossa shouldering an increasingly heavy load. Each presents unique challenges for a photographer—Turbo's low ceilings and intense lighting, Foufs' elevated stage, Sala's more elegant but tightly packed room.

"We know the venues are going away, but we'll keep going as long as there still are some," she says with the pragmatism that defines Montreal's music community.

The squeeze plays out beyond physical space. From what Rose and many others have seen, provincial arts funding has been slashed, putting pressure on a scene that's always operated on razor-thin margins.

"We've never had as little money for the arts as we have now," Cormier observes, drawing on her experience working with local labels. "If you're not funding the arts and rents keep going up, and bands can't play anywhere? They're just not gonna be making music anymore."

Yet there's a stubborn persistence to Montreal's DIY ethos. When official channels close, apartments transform into venues, after-hours spaces host secret shows, and the community adapts with the pragmatism that's always defined it.

The appeal is as much social as it is musical—a refuge from the industry-focused mindset that dominates bigger venues. "Everyone's just there to listen to a band and maybe mosh a little and smoke a couple of cigarettes outside. Nobody is talking about industry stuff."

Her photography preserves this spirit—not as nostalgia, but as a living document of community in motion. Each flash-lit image of a crowded room seems to ask: if nobody captures this, did it happen? In a city rapidly rewriting itself, these visual records matter.

"The good news is that there will always be DIY spaces," Cormier says. "They will keep popping up, and while I think places like Turbo House or Casa will keep fighting, the city at some point has to ask itself: If we've always been an arts city, are we going to keep that, or are we going to become Toronto?"

The shot will always be worth it

Back to scrolling through thousands of raw images from recent shows: Cormier pauses on a photo from that packed Béton Armé show—a guitarist suspended mid-air, the crowd's hands already reaching up to catch him.

"I still go to shows for fun," she says, despite photographing hundreds professionally. The camera gives her a reason to be there, but not the only one.

In her dual role as both documentarian and participant, Cormier embodies the resilient spirit of Montreal's underground—making do with less, finding beauty in the chaos, and showing up night after night to spaces that might not exist tomorrow.

The shot will always be worth it.