Pink is the colour. Barbie pink, bubble-gum pink, it has so many connotations. Scene Queen, Hannah Collins to her friends, embraces them all. With her new EP ‘Metalicious’ she’s embracing something else too, metal. Over six tracks she’s exploring the heavier side of her sound; Bimbocore never sounded so brutal.
If you haven’t stumbled across Scene Queen her music mixes elements of trap, rock, breakdowns and hardcore, all combined with a glorious wit; what she describes as ‘Bimbocore’. This time, there’s more. You see, inside everyone are two people – or at least, there are inside Hannah Collins – a bubbly motormouth and a darker side. That duality is what she’s exploring here, and it sounds like a type of mania.
The contrast is obvious. On songs like ‘Shopaholic’ or ‘Tracksuit’ her delivery switches between singing and death growls, but that’s not all. The EP is far stranger than that. It takes the pop-adjacent effervescence found on her 2024 album ‘Hot Singles In Your Area’ and wraps it around darker, filthier guitar riffs and punishing breakdowns. While parts of ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ sound like Linkin Park filtered through a pair of curling tongs, the title track features full-on deathcore (courtesy of Left To Suffer) that stings like hot wax on a very sensitive area. Flipping between these sounds and trap beats, like on ‘Manicure’, gives the songs a sweet & sour flavour that is surprisingly alluring.
Vocally, she favours an interesting trick, repetition. This works remarkably well, especially with the detached way she sings “Ring Ring Ring Ring” as a melody line on ‘Pink Flip Phone’. On ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ the refrain is clearly a riff on ‘Rest In Peace’ and would be irritating if she didn’t give it momentum by changing the presentation each time. In contrast the repeating phrase “Hittin’ the mosh” on ‘Meltalicious’ is used to create a sense of stasis so that when the huge stampede of deathcore hits it induces a crushing sense of tonal whiplash.
Despite having her tongue firmly wedged in her cheek the lyrics are honest and sexually liberal. There are two ways of looking at the title; Metal-icious or Meta-licious. Both work. Either it’s about Collins wrapping her tongue around the delicious sounds of metal, or about being delightfully metatextual about herself, music and the scene in general. There’s also a third reading by way of the EP’s cover art, which has Collins pictured wearing what look to be a pink pair of Meta’s AI glasses, sometimes dubbed “Pervert Glasses” for their insidious connotations. While it may be a stretch to assume she’s definitely sporting a pair, she is well known for delightfully barbed takedowns of toxic culture – check out her 2024 single ‘18+’ for an indication of how pointed her work can be – and the tone here is no different. It’s almost chaste compared to the in-your-face approach of ‘Hot Singles In Your Area’, but it does feature a song called ‘T!ts Out At Brunch’, which injects a dose of smutty humour.
‘Metalicious’ is a fascinating sonic experiment that swings wildly between irreverent and intense. It’s a gloriously unsubtle EP, like a big, pink patchwork quilt.
IAN KENWORTHY