AI Metalcore ‘Band’ Broken Avenue Busted Ripping Off Knocked Loose, Counterparts & More

So apparently there’s a metalcore band out there called Broken Avenue. And by “band” we mean: an AI-generated Frankenstein monster that sounds like Knocked Loose, Counterparts and The Devil Wears Prada had their riffs shoved through a blender full of bot farms.

Broken Avenue is currently pulling in 129,000+ monthly listeners on Spotify, has landed itself on a stack of playlists, and has even copped the Spotify-generated “This Is Broken Avenue” collection – the kind of badge that usually means you’ve, y’know, actually done something.

Instead, this thing appears to exist solely to scrape royalties out of the streaming system while cosplaying as bands that actually sweat, bleed and tour for a living.

The ripping isn’t subtle either. The music is basically “what if Counterparts but legally dubious”, while the artwork looks like it was generated by feeding Midjourney a diet of other people’s album covers.

Case in point: Broken Avenue’s new single ‘finally free’ just happens to look suspiciously like Counterparts’ ‘Nothing Left To Love’. Wild coincidence, hey.

Another of their singles, ‘YOU’RE ALL I SEE’ is a blatant rip of Knocked Loose’s ‘You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To’ cover art.

The list goes on.

Even more cooked: dozens of Broken Avenue songs were uploaded in the last six weeks alone, all credited to one mysterious name – “James Trolby” – who may be a real person, or may be three ChatGPT prompts in a trench coat.

Anyway, Counterparts frontman Brendan Murphy caught wind of the project and took to X with the restraint of a saint:

“$100 to anyone who can get me the legit contact info for James Trolby I won’t do anything fucking crazy you won’t get in trouble.”

If this is ringing bells, it’s because last year we had the Velvet Sundown saga – another AI “band” that racked up millions of streams while pretending to be human, before imploding in a cloud of fake spokespeople and apology bios quietly admitting it was a “synthetic music project”.

The difference this time? Broken Avenue isn’t even pretending very hard. It’s just… existing. Verified. Monetised. Eating up playlist real estate while actual musicians are fighting for scraps.

Meanwhile, Deezer recently revealed that over 50,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded every single day (!!) which accounts for around 34% of all new music on the platform (!!!). They’ve at least started tagging synthetic uploads.

Broken Avenue, meanwhile, has 20 fans on Deezer but six figures on Spotify – which strongly suggests bots, playlists, or both doing the heavy lifting.

So yeah. This is where we’re at:

• Fake bands
• Fake art
• Fake people
• Real money

And almost none of it flowing to musicians who actually create something worth moshing to.

If platforms don’t start properly vetting their “artists,” this is the future – and it’s about as inspiring as a breakdown written by Microsoft Word.

Further Reading

So An AI “Artist” Just Landed a US $3 Million Record Deal

Daniel Bedingfield Embraces AI as the Future of Music-Making: ‘We Have To Adapt Or Die’

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Have Officially Bailed From Spotify