The "Influence or Coincidence, Inspiration or Plagiarism" Thread

March 26, 2025 10:10 AM

Having listening to the new Mechina album Bellum Interruptum, I realized the first minute of its opening track sounds practically similar to that of the RichaadEB/Cristina Vee cover of "Bad Apple!!" When that first verse hits, I almost feel like singing "Ever on and on, I continue circling, with nothing but my hate and the carousel of agony..."


May 23, 2025 10:36 PM

If you listen closely to the "na-na na-na, na-na na-na" hook throughout this Falling in Reverse song, do you hear anything familiar?

It's "Elmo's World"! I swear I can hear Elmo singing "Elmo's World" in my mind every time that hook comes on. That's gotta be a coincidence! See the first 30 seconds of this video:

Small fact about me that I once thought was embarrassing but I now have the guts to say here: When I was a small kid 20 years ago, singing along to that show's theme song, I kept singing "Elmo's Squirrel" instead of "Elmo's World". My parents were a little confused, thinking "Elmo has a pet squirrel?!"

May 31, 2025 04:10 AM

Check the riff that appears at 15:25 in the Morpheus Descends YouTube clip & compare it with the riff that arrives at 1:55 in Neuropath's "Rectal Pulpation:




"Rectal Pulpation" was the first song I ever wrote for Neuropath back in 1993 & the Morpheus Descends track was released in 1994. We didn't release a studio recording of our track until the start of 1995 though so it must be pure coincidence, despite the riffs being almost exactly the same.

June 07, 2025 02:23 PM

Why does the "again and again and again" part of this Architects song sounds so much like part of the chorus of this Chainsmokers song?! Surely that has to be a coincidence, right? RIGHT???


June 21, 2025 10:15 AM

The addition of several of my judgement submissions into the Hall has ended up creating a wild coincidence involving 3 different cover arts:

As you can see, the Sonic Violence cover art consists of a drawing of an Iron Giant-like silver robot dude, and the Cryptopsy cover art consists of a futuristic post-apocalyptic dystopian wasteland. The Conflиct cover art looks like it has combined those other two artworks and made it better, by making the silver robot dude more realistic and adding him to a more detailed dystopian wasteland. Now that I think about it, I can kind of say the same about the music itself! In that Conflиct album, they take the electro-industrial of Sonic Violence and some of the death metal of Cryptopsy, then add in some melodic groove for a much better stylistic mix. At least that's what I'm hearing...