It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Jimin – Who
Who indeed.
Stray Kids – Chk Chk Boom
Not bad backings but it’s hard to stan when the vocals are this cheesy. This is basically Jimin’s song with a bit less “who” but the same amount of “why”.
Rolling Quartz – One
An actual pretty decent original song from a group that mainly excels at covers (and looking stylish), although could they have possibly done the two-handed tapping parts any slower? I shit on j-pop a lot and I should because it’s fucking shit, but when it comes to rock, the better Japanese groups can play rings around these sleepytime guitar solos.
STAYC – Stay with me
It’s a fan song and it’s actually really fucking good. Stay-C have been on-form lately and this continues the trend. They really missed their chance to do a Sigourney Weaver style blind basketball dunk at the end though, would have gone well with their catchphrase oh well.
THE BOYZ – Gibberish
“All I hear is gibberish” ain’t that the truth.
TWS – Double Take
Lots of controversy about this sounding similar to GD&TOP’s “Knock Out” but it wasn’t as much of a copy as I was led to believe, the aesthetics and hook are similar but TWS’s song is much more sing-songy (and the worse for it).
&TEAM – Koegawari
Hey one of HYBE’s latest no-name boy groups has a good song, and it’s good. The rhythms are what makes this one work, the repeated off-beat playing that sustains all the way through the song makes it work, a very rare k-pop example of mid-tempo R&B style groove done right.
n.SSign – Tiger (New Flavour)
When you grab a keyboard for the day from Cash Converters and find out only one key works and still have to make production deadline.
DKB – Flirting X
I like it how they try to imply with editing that the awful squirty keyboard sound is actually coming from the guitar.
WAKER – Vanilla Choco Shake
When I first saw this I thought one of the guys was wearing a tartan miniskirt. I was all about to rate them highly for breaking down gender norms and providing precious eye candy for the Kpopalypse 2024 Objectification Survey (voting is still going at the time of writing folks, get in your vote while you can by clicking here) and I realised that he was just wearing shorts instead. Oh well maybe next time.
APEX – The Giant
One of the weirdest boy-pop songs I’ve ever heard, hands down. They just threw every random chant idea into this song, all at once, at light speed. You know that noise you make when you’re just about to sneeze, and instead of sneezing, or not-sneezing, your body edges you so close to the sneeze reflex that it kind of dies in the ass on the way out and you end up with a lame kind of half-sneeze? You can hear that sound in this song at 1:32 you’re welcome.
TRAX – To be continued
Hey TRAX reformed, again, or something. I guess this song implies that they might be doing more stuff soon so let’s see if they can finally reach the X Japan levels of relevance they were planned to. They sure didn’t the first time around and the fact that this video shows them laughing at footage of their old hair suggests that they won’t this time either.
EVNNE – I ＜3 U
Slow down there kids, we barely even know you! Dinner and a movie first, damn.
Lee Chaeyeon – Standing On My Own
Lee Chaeyeon has been doing great lately. This is just good and way above the sappy nonsense that usually gets trotted out for concepts like these.
Xenex – Maddest
Kim Garam the chalk master has graduated to graffiti murals, witness her impact for this nugu boy group. We’re cheering for you!
Boeun – Savior
This looks like one of those Blackpink fan videos where the fan makes a MV for their favourite Blackpink song with no video look vaguely professional just by cobbling together footage of all the different girls’ dozens of phone and makeup endorsements. I guess Class:y’s agency thought that was a pretty good idea too, except they only have one endorsement so the editing isn’t as good here.
ph-1 feat. Lee Youngji – Flat Coke
ph-1 clearly didn’t want a situation where the viewstats showed people only started listening for Youngji’s part, so he plays it safe by letting Youngji rap all over his lines and tag-teaming it Beastie Boys style. Smart.
Lee Seunghoon – My Type
I always worry now whenever they try and make the latest YG boy look like a suave party animal. We all know what happened the last time they tried that.
Ha Sungwoon – Blessed
I don’t know if this has subtle AI-generation or not but it probably does because a lot of it seems too random to really make conceptual sense, or maybe the visual designers just have no clue, who knows.
Kim Woojin – What U Say
I’m guessing Azodi didn’t write this one, because it’s not that good… oh well…
Rockit Girl – The sea in the dew
Rockit Girl come back with less-rocky song and video with Leeseul in assorted bikinis #57. I was actually aware of this video being released just before last roundup went live, but I skipped over it because Rockit Girl already have so many videos like this with similar names that it looked like a reupload. But fear not: Rockit Girl are historically very responsive to Kpopalypse, after all this is the group who started using the Shure Super 55 correctly because I told them to, so we know we’re going to get a much better heavier version…
Rockit Girl – The sea in the dew (new version)
…and here it is… but they removed it! Bring it back, this version was musically way better! Goddamnit…
Kim Nayeon – Love Story Under The Umbrella
Here’s this week’s random solo song from a BerryGood member that you forgot even existed and like all the others recently it’s nothing much.
015B feat. Yireh – Memory Washer
015B are so great when they finally stop doing fucking yacht-rock and try other styles, here they get it very right.
Koh Nayoung – Far From Home
Giving Eyedi “& New” vibes here, and it’s not quite that accomplished but I’m just happy to hear this sound in general.
QWER – Some Anime bullshit thing, who cares
I’m sorry but QWER’s song was only a minute and a half long and had nothing special about it and not even any QWER members in the goddamn video so it’s pretty useless realkly so instead we’re going to do our non-Korean non-pop non-world-music bit here. This week it’s ACAB, an old school skinhead/oi punk group (with a touch of metal arguably) from Malaysia. They’re actually pretty well known in tradpunk circles because their song “Skinhead For Life” has been covered by quite a few other bands, most notably Haymaker, but I think “We Are ACAB” is a better song so here’s a live version and you can check out the studio version here for a (slightly) better mix if you’re finding it hard to hear what’s going on because of all the drunks with even less hair than Kpopalypse jumping up on stage and screaming. Malaysia Malaysia Malaysia, Oi Oi Oi!
SWJA – Star Candy
It’s the sign of a very strange week when SWJA actually has something I like.
From20 & Hello Gloom – Your Love
Generic dance stuff but it’s pretty fun and there’s some pretty quality male torso on display so take notes if you’re into that.
2Z – Playground
I didn’t like this much and nearly just didin’t even include it but then I notice that they’re at Yongma Land – it’s been a while! Now that it’s back open for business it’s time to close down the Paradise Diner.
PLAK – Hip Hop
That moment at 2:32 where she looks at him disgusted and just leaves before he can turn his shit song back on… we all wish we were her.
Eero – 20 Again
Enjoy this super-Z-tier version of BOL4 who actually sound a bit better than BOL4 themselves have for about half a decade.
Kid Milli – Do What Moves You
Somehow this ad for some bullshit drink nobody likes is one of the better Kid Milli songs.
GroovyRoom ft. some rap losers – ‘FASHO
A bunch of Autotuned rap idiots lose at life while a sample from a much better song that you should be listening to instead plays. It’s enough to make me finish roundup for the week, so I will.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
How To Listen – Why rock music can’t catch on in Korea
Okay so maybe it’s a thinly veiled ad for rock group Silica Gel but it also has a lot of very correct information on why it’s difficult for bands in Korea to make money. Mind you, the majority of these points also apply increasingly to any bands, anywhere. Definitely worth a watch for people curious about the economics of playing rock music.
Heejin’s guitar solo at this ARTMS show
People want to know, is the guitar solo real? It probably is, because it’s only an intermediate-level solo so it’s hardly even worth faking, mind you there are other parts of this show where Heejin plays the guitar and I can hear NO guitar so who knows, perhaps someone’s doing playback. In any event the guitarist behind her is doing the heavy lifting, but if Loona girls holding guitars and busting out solos makes guitars cooler then I’m still all for it. It’s not too bad and only slightly worse than Rolling Quartz’ lead breaks this week.
Block B – Freeze
Block B’s very early stuff just sounds like a BigBang production without much of the bang. They definitely lifted their game after this early phase, but definitely a group that started rough. I guess that golden phone had some good music production tutorials stored on it, Zico just needed to scroll past the very interesting address book to find it.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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