Scene Queen: Bimbocore Bangers!
It’s often tough for any artist to write what they feel without causing a stir within the community. In recent music news, the diss tracks between KENDRICK LAMAR and DRAKE had the internet buzzing for days, and even more when Hind’s Hall by MACKLEMORE was released, a song in support of Palestine. Within the metal and alternative world, Los Angeles’ SCENE QUEEN constantly pushes the barrier on what can be discussed within the scene, as well as the sound and style of ‘Bimbocore’. The mixture of pop and metalcore, like many new things in metal, is constantly polarising, especially online, and with the release of her upcoming debut album, Hot Singles In Your Area, more incredible out there songs will be coming down the pipeline. Songs that will delight fans and displease the harshest of critics.
“It’s just funny because 99% of the time, when people are hating on me, they’re say things like ‘she’s so full of herself’. Clearly I’m taking the piss out of everything online, and if you haven’t caught on at this point, I don’t think there’s hope that you ever will,” SCENE QUEEN begins. “My whole thing is making metal not that serious because it truly is not that serious. It doesn’t need to have the most meaningful lyrics, you’re allowed to have fun. Different songs can have different purposes, and with my place in music, I feel my purpose is to get the party going. If that’s not your vibe, that’s fine. People seem to think that I think that if you don’t like my music, you’re a misogynist, which is not true. The fact that people don’t just not like my music, and they feel the need to write a 10 page thesis on how much they hate me and why I’m a bad person and why I like look ugly, etc.”
She adds, “some people will say that I sound like 15 other bands, ‘if you like this woman you should listen to or like instead of listening to this one you should support this one’. It’s as if we’re in constant competition or comparison. No one gives a fuck if men do things and if there’s 100 metalcore bands that can sound exactly the same, if it’s all men but if someone who isn’t male does metalcore, they’re suddenly SPIRITBOX. The ways people compare me to like different female artists, like Courtney LaPlante, who I love, I love her music so much but comparing me to her is like comparing a Pomeranian to a Great Dane dog. They’re completely different entities and they’re not for the same thing. One is a little fluffy lap dog and the other, you can run in the woods with.”
At the time of this interview, SCENE QUEEN was on tour with PVRIS, a band that she had been a fan of for a long time. When asked about it, she describes the tour life thus far. “This has been the most full circle tour for me, and I honestly cannot say enough good things about this tour. This is just the kindest we’ve been treated as a support act, the fact that Lynn [Gunn] every single day comes and watches my set is crazy. She just does it in a way that people can absolutely see her, but the fact that she even takes the time to do that is so mind blowing to me. I’ve been a fan of PVRIS since the beginning, since the White Noise album and it’s funny because the timeline of stuff Lynn has written has followed the trajectory of my life.”
“Anything that I needed at that moment in time was always in a PVRIS album,” SCENE QUEEN continues. “When she started shifting into more pop stuff, it was right when I was in college and I was transitioning to pop because I had left the scene for a little bit just because I felt like it wasn’t really a safe space for women. Then with this most recent album that she just dropped, it has the song, Hype Zombies, on it and about getting slept on in the music industry. PVRIS always hits for me musically so I was so stoked when I got the offer and then now even more stoked. They say ‘don’t meet your heroes’ or whatever but really she is the coolest person, like we went out and got drinks the other night and was just so damn cool.”
The album, Hot Singles In Your Area is to be released in June this year, and is her debut record with Hopeless Records, after her EPs, Bimbocore and Bimbocore Vol.2. Amongst the singles in promotion was the Myspace inspired collaboration with 6ARELYHUMAN, Stuck. When discussing the song’s creation, she says, “6ARELYHUMAN actually opened up for me on my US headline tour I did last year. I suggested to them that we should just get together, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a collab or anything. I just love their sound and this was when they started blowing up on TikTok around that time. I had heard of 6ARELYHUMAN since the beginning of their project. I loved doing a combination of kind of like scene style, whether that’d be like crunkcore, or like MILLIONAIRES sort of stuff. Then mixing it with the like, kind of djent guitars/mixing it with super poppy stuff.”
“With MILF specifically,” she adds about another single from the upcoming album, “I had just been in Nashville for the entire summer having the time of my life and I thought how it would be funny if I could add country to what I do. I think the whole thing that I love about this project is because I called it ‘bimbocore’ and made it my own style, so it means that I’m allowed to do any sort of genre. MILF was just me being like how far can I push it, like Pink Hotel before that on my last EP.
“Honestly, I just have so many random dreams about creating a world with the Hot Singles In Your Area stuff and doing this whole little digital reality show sort of thing which hopefully I get the chance to dip my toes into,” SCENE QUEEN describes when asked what she hopes for once the album is released. “I just really hope the album inspires people to be comfortable in themselves, within their sexuality, and also knowing that there is not like a clear path to being themselves. I didn’t just get confident all in one day. I experienced a lot of trauma and also a lot of really embarrassing events in life. I hope it just inspires people to not give a fuck honestly, just exist as themselves and not be so hard on themselves. Life is confusing and messy and it’s always a little bit embarrassing.”
Hot Singles In Your Area is out now via Hopeless Records.
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