Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Austin metalheads call the block cursed, but the venue wearing the Gonzales flag motto has held it longer than anyone since the legend it replaced. Come and Take It Live at 2015 East Riverside Drive, Building 4, opened in April 2017 on the same complex where the Back Room - Austin's metal headquarters from 1973 to 2006 - once stood. Between those eras the room burned through five short-lived tenants in five years: Beauty Ballroom, a temporary Antone's, Midway Field House and Grizzly Hall all came and went before owners Anthony Stevenson and partner Travis Davis, both Back Room veterans as fans, took over and gave East Riverside its heavy-music home back. The two-storey space runs a 500-to-750 capacity across a main general-admission floor, mezzanine, upstairs balcony and VIP skybox, with two full bars plus optional service on the VIP balcony and smoking patio, pool tables, corn hole, multiple merch stations, a green room and an elevated production booth driving high-end audio and lighting. Free parking - a vanishing Austin luxury - surrounds the building, with dedicated bus parking for tours. The booking rebuilt Austin's metal scene almost single-handedly: Superjoint, Destruction, Immolation, Alcest, D.R.I., Marduk, The Black Dahlia Murder and Born of Osiris all played the early calendars, and the owners credit the room with pulling Texas metal traffic back from San Antonio. The venue styles itself genre-neutral - indie, country, hip-hop, punk, film and art events share the stage, often with outside promoters - but the core remains the heavy end of the touring circuit. The name comes from the 1835 Come and Take It flag of Gonzales, Texas, a fitting banner for a room that refused to let the Back Room's legacy die. As the East Riverside corridor redevelops around it - with AEG building a 4,000-capacity venue nearby and taking over the neighbouring Emo's space - the club remains the scrappy, fan-owned heart of Austin's loudest music.