REVIEW: Scene Queen - METALICIOUS
- Angel Turley
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
SCENE QUEEN has never been particularly interested in playing by the rules. In a scene where heaviness can sometimes come wrapped in an unnecessarily serious package, Hannah Collins has spent the last few years kicking down the door in pink platforms, armed with pop hooks, Y2K nostalgia and enough attitude to make even the most committed gatekeeper uncomfortable. Now, with METALICIOUS, she’s turning the volume up - and, perhaps most importantly, making the heavy bits heavier.
If the whole point of SCENE QUEEN’s self-proclaimed “bimbocore” has been proving that femininity, humour and unapologetically ridiculous fun have every right to exist alongside crushing guitars, METALICIOUS feels like the idea fully unshackled. Described by SCENE QUEEN as “chaotic recession pop, Y2K coded, metal madness”, the seven track EP is deliberately excessive, gleefully messy and completely unwilling to pick a single lane.
Opening with Pink Flip Phone, METALICIOUS immediately establishes that this isn’t simply a continuation of Hot Singles In Your Area. There’s an increased sense of urgency running through the production, with the glossy, hyperactive pop elements smashing headfirst into heavier guitars and SCENE QUEEN’s increasingly ferocious vocal delivery. It’s nostalgic without becoming a costume piece, taking the trashy glamour of the early 2000s and dragging it directly into the pit.
Then comes Manicure, where the contrast becomes even more delicious. The song is pure SCENE QUEEN: catchy enough to lodge itself in your brain, ridiculous enough to make you grin, but underpinned by a genuine sense of frustration. The joke is always part of the weaponry. SCENE QUEEN understands that you can say something angry without sounding miserable; sometimes the best revenge is dancing while you do it.
Shopaholic and Drop Dead Gorgeous continue that balancing act, leaning into the hyper-feminine aesthetic while refusing to let it become superficial. There’s a knowing quality to everything SCENE QUEEN does. The pink, the makeup, the shopping references and the deliberately outrageous presentation aren’t disguising the heavier themes; they’re part of the point. Because beneath the glitter, METALICIOUS is still angry. There’s a reason the music feels so satisfying when the breakdowns hit. This isn’t simply pop music with metal riffs bolted onto it for novelty value. It’s a deliberate rejection of the idea that there’s a correct way to exist within alternative music.
Tracksuit might be the clearest example. It takes something as gloriously mundane as Y2K sportswear and turns it into another vehicle for SCENE QUEEN’s particular brand of chaos. The song is enormous, aggressive and knowingly stupid in precisely the right way. Yet underneath the humour is an artist becoming increasingly comfortable with just how heavy she can make this project. And then METALICIOUS delivers its knockout punch. The title track, featuring LEFT TO SUFFER, is exactly what happens when SCENE QUEEN’s world collides with deathcore. SCENE QUEEN describes it as a “tumblr indie sleaze club song” written “in metal font”, and honestly, that might be the most accurate description possible.
There’s something wonderfully absurd about the entire concept: a girls’ night at a metal show, drinks flowing, purses flying through the mosh pit and deathcore vocals lurking around the corner. But musically, it works far better than it has any right to. The contrast between SCENE QUEEN’s sugary delivery and LEFT TO SUFFER’s brutality creates exactly the kind of collision that has made SCENE QUEEN so compelling in the first place.
It’s also significant because METALICIOUS doesn’t simply use heaviness as a gimmick. SCENE QUEEN has spoken about recording some of her lowest screams yet, alongside the deathcore features, while wanting the project to recapture the sense of freedom she felt when she first started making the Bimbocore releases. You can hear that freedom throughout the EP.
There’s even room for the “trauma dumping” SCENE QUEEN jokingly warns about in the EP promo. And that matters. Behind the jokes and the neon-coloured aesthetic, there’s something considerably more vulnerable happening. SCENE QUEEN’s music has always been about reclaiming space - taking things that have been dismissed as too feminine, too silly or too poppy and putting them directly in front of the people who insist that heavy music needs to look a certain way.
METALICIOUS doesn’t ask permission. It kicks the door open, throws a handbag into the pit and starts the breakdown. What makes the EP particularly successful is that SCENE QUEEN hasn’t sacrificed the immediacy that made her music so accessible in pursuit of being heavier. The hooks are still huge. The concepts are still ridiculous. The humour is still firmly intact. But the guitars hit harder, the screams are nastier and the whole thing feels less like an artist experimenting with metal and more like someone realising she can absolutely own this space. SCENE QUEEN has never been about restraint. Asking her to tone it down would be like asking a mosh pit to sit quietly.
Ultimately, METALICIOUS is SCENE QUEEN at her most confident, chaotic and completely herself. It’s bubblegum pop smashed against deathcore, Y2K nostalgia drenched in distortion and a middle finger raised firmly at anyone still convinced that there’s only one way to be “heavy”.
The scene has changed considerably since SCENE QUEEN first started calling her sound bimbocore. METALICIOUS feels like proof that she helped change it. Pink is the new black. And apparently, it also comes with breakdowns.
Score: 9/10
METALICIOUS will be released on 11th September 2026 via Hopeless Records.
Words: Angel Turley
Photos: Maggie London
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