LIVE REVIEW: Scene Queen, Girli, Lake Malice, SWG3 Galvanizers Yard, Glasgow, 04/09/2025

Scene Queen brought her self-styled ‘bimbocore’ energy to the UK for a short three show tour kicking off in the West End of Glasgow at SWG3 Galvanizser Yard. The show had been moved from the Barrowland Ballroom and SWG3 was the perfect alternative venue for the one thousand that were crammed in. We had saw Scene Queen support fellow American PVRIS at Glasgow’s O2 Academy last year and we were so impressed that we wanted to see the band play a headline show.

First up tonight we have Lake Malice, a band we have become very familiar with this year … in fact they have played in the city three times this year and all in this exact same venue at the SWG3 Galvanizers Hall having previously supported VUKOVI and RORY. We even had the chance to interview the band after the show, you can read our interview here. Alice Guala leads the band with some very powerful vocals backed up with the always energetic Blake Cornwall on guitar, both of whom have a highly-charged stage presence as they run through a seven track set of metalcore including the excellent Scatterbrain, Mitsuko and a new song Nobody Wants To Be You. This was a very enjoyable set and it looked as though they had won over more than a few new fans tonight, Lake Malice are working on a debut album right now and we can’t wait to hear it. 9/10

Girli has been supporting Scene Queen for the whole Hot Shows In Your Area Tour including the USA tour, Girli brings her own version of ‘matriarchy pop’ in a very entertaining set where we get to hear eight songs helping to warm the crowd up nicely for the main band. We caught Girli on the last tour at Saint Luke’s in Glasgow to coincide with the 2024 Matriarchy album release, the opening track Nothing Hurts Like A Girl energises the crowd. There may only be two of them on the stage but Girli (Amelia Toomey) works the crowd really well with decent engagement during I Really Fucked It Up and More Than A Friend, the latter track is by far their most streamed song with no less than seventy-five million streams on Spotify, Matriarchy ends a set filled with joy and passion. 9/10

Scene Queen took to the stage at 9.15pm to a massive roar from the mostly young excitable crowd, the singer-songwriter supports the LGBTQ+ community and they have turned out in high numbers tonight, already we get the feeling that this crowd are right up for it tonight as the set opens with BDSM and Pink Push-Up Bra to a wall of noise. The next song Finger has somewhat controversial lyrics but that’s what a Scene Queen show is all about, they are normally no holds barred shows that teeter right on the edge of acceptability. Judging by the massive crowd that watched Hannah perform at the 2024 Download Festival, Scene Queen have quickly become accepted in the metal scene with a good mix of the self-styled Bimbocore, metalcore and nu-metal mix. Bimbocore can be described as ‘a hyperfeminine offshoot of metalcore’ and it works really well here as guitarist Daniel Rudd who also plays with the band Boy Hero rocks the venue to its foundations with his eclectic style of guitar playing.

The set continues with Pink Hotel and MILF before it’s announced that they will play freshly released track Platform Shoes for the first time live in Glasgow, the crowd reaction to this one is special and is one of the best moments from the performance tonight. The mosh pits and circle pits are now well and truly opened as the passionate crowd lose any inhibitions they may have had beforehand helping to create a very unique highly-charged energy around the venue. Before Pink Panther Hannah tells us, “she paid sixty dollars to get these balls here” referring to the large rubber balls that are part of the stage setup. Barbie & Ken steals the show tonight with the usual mayhem between Hannah Collins and Daniel Rudd as the full crowd joins in with the chorus “Ken and Barbie sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G, Barbie and Ken in a pink, dream house, two go in, only one comes out”. As we move towards the end of the thirteen-track set Pink Rover keeps the energy high and the finale could only be one song … 18+ from the debut album Hot Singles In Your Area. By this point, five fans have been invited up on to the stage to provide some extra entertainment, 18+ is a controversial song written around misogynistic behaviour from particular bands and with lyrics such as, “18+, 18+ get those children off your bus” you can easily understand where we are coming from. This was a no-holds-barred performance from an artist that openly talks about being bipolar and covers a wide base of music, sometimes controversial but still brutally honest … we need more musicians like Scene Queen in the music industry. 10/10

Written by: Alan Brown