On March 3rd 2022, Hopeless records most recent addition to the roster, a Pop/Metal artist named “Scene Queen” released a new song titled “Pink Rover”, which features a pink candle lit table, mixed with Occult/Gothic props and imagery, including blood, as the music video portrays a group of women beating up a man who is catcalling and harassing women.

While the reviews of the song are mixed, it has received mass amounts of attention on the social media platform Tik-Tok where the artist now sits at over 300K followers. The audio from the music video has been used in over 11.6K videos on the platform and the music video has been viewed over 83K times within the first week of being released. 

But another Pop/Metal band “Peachy”, located in Tampa, Florida is finding too many similarities between the new Hopeless Record's arrival and the aesthetic they pushed back in 2019 when they released their music video for their song “Fake It 'Til You Make It”, which also includes a Pink Candle lit table with Gothic-styled props and blood as they sing about fake friends.

Bassist Christopher Murray had this to say in a recent facebook post:

“Down to coining a “-core” name (ours bitchcore, theirs bimbocore) - the artwork, the imagery, even the band with ski masks but the vocalist not wearing one.

I want to be clear here, even though the band feels this way, I’m posting this of my own fruition, and honestly, I was to be EXTRA clear, I honestly don’t think the “scene queen” girl is evidently at fault here (unless idk, she is)- I’m assuming that more than likely, this was a label or management push, or producer push (the way everything is and appears) because I got LOTS of industry fu**s on here and from what I’ve learned in life, it’s hard to trust a lot of you unfortunately. “

According to Chris, Peachy’s vocalist Kara Murray was even contacted by Hopeless Records to help promote the song due to her own large Tik-Tok following of over 230K followers. 

“The reason I’m so passionate about this is because for YEARS, Kara and I have worked our asses off, spending every last dime we’ve had, living in the worst conditions, eating gas station food, and spending anything extra on the band. And this happens, I shouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t help but be a little pissed off…..All in all, we wish the best of luck to Scene Queen, we support women in metal and want to see it happen more. We just feel snuffed, and it isn’t very women empowering to steal from other women artists.” said Chris in his final statements about the issue."

Peachy recently released a new single titled “Oops you died” on Friday, March 11th 2022 in response to these events.

So the question is, is this purely coincidence?

Below are some of the pictures used to compare, you decide for yourself.

Where is the line between coincidence and copycat? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

On April 22nd, Tampa Death band Odium Rot released their latest track “Barren” which was accompanied by a self-produced lyric video by drummer Mark Christopher. You can watch the video Here:

I had the opportunity to talk with mark a bit more about the single and what it means to them.


What is ODIUM ROT as a band about? What do you stand for? 

Odium Rot was formed because we were tired of hearing bands sound exactly the same and we wanted to hear metal with real substance. Metal has been changed to appeal to a wider audience range, and we wanted to write metal with soul. We also wanted to make sure this music was for the working class to help workers and middle-low class people get through hard times in this world and feel like they have something they can relate too. 

What is the song “Barren” about? 

Barren was the second song we created as a band, and it touches on a handful of topics that we as a society bared witness too during such a  scary and uncertain time. It talks about the disinformation given to us by our trusted government, but more importantly it talks about the civil injustices that we saw repeatedly on display, and still see to this day. That goes for most of the upcoming EP too. It’s all a pure reflection of what we saw our environment to be at that period time. 

How do you feel about producing your own music video as opposed to outsourcing? 

If you ask me, the biggest problem for small bands is trying to stick to a budget. Content is very important as a band and if you outsource, it can prove to be costly. I think the more you can do on your own, the better. I personally, have always had a love for art and design. In high school I wanted to start digital design courses but didn’t have the means to do so. It was shortly after I joined the band, I noticed my band mate was creating content for the band and that drove me to wanna learn how to do it myself just for fun. Over time, my band and I saw major improvements in my work and I went from doing album art, to doing merch designs, to eventually learning how to do streaming videos. Almost 100% of the content you see us spit out is done by me, with the grace of the band. As a DIY band, we couldn’t be more proud of what we produced. 

What has been the most challenging part of the process? 

For the video itself, the whole thing was a learning curve. I knew absolutely nothing about creating streaming videos. Originally I made a simple streaming video for Barren, and sent that into the band chat. It was well received and we were gonna release it, as is. But the idea of a lyric video was tossed around and I told them I’d give it a try. So I did, and I came up with a pretty simple one quick. But arguably it didn’t fully capture the essence of the song. So I went and made a whole new video from scratch with the the intention of having a matching theme and that’s the one you see today. The sequence editing for the final draft took me quit some time. Not sure how many hours in total, but it took me over a week to get things the way I wanted them. The most tedious thing I’ve done in digital art work thus far. I didn’t sleep much that week. 

​As far as, the music. We had a lot of hurdles to go over to get to where we are now. To put it in perspective, we started recording at the start of quarantine and we JUST got our masters back. Unfortunately, Covid-19 got in the way a few times and postponed studio dates. There were also a few times we had no money to book dates with our producer so we just had to simply wait til the time was right. Luckily, after nearly 2 years we are finally seeing the end of the tunnel and getting to a point where we’re ready to show everyone what we’ve been up to.

Why should people listen to your song or be interested in the music you’re making? 

 I think the biggest reason is because this music is just flat out different. We bring a unique mix of a lot of different influences together to create something special that stands in its own category. That’s why we created the idea of  TAMPA DEATH. Because although we cling to the Deathcore genre, we believe this music has a breath of its own. 

When can fans expect more TAMPA DEATH? 

Sooner than you think. We’ve been silent for a long while now, and we’re about to kick the door in. So absolutely expect more announcements and more developments soon. Right now, we have two shows lined up. One on May 21st, in Tampa at Born Free pub and another that has yet to be announced. For fans who want to hear more of us it’s a good chance to hear most of the EP in its rawest form before it’s released. Other than that, they just need to keep up with us on social media and everything will come in waves.

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