It’s time for another Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out some new releases!

Cherry Bullet – Love In Space

A worthy follow-up to “Love So Sweet” which utilises a lot of the same musical trick-bag.  If you like that song (and you do), you’ll like this too.  CGI cat does not mrcs though, can computer animators please stop taking jobs away from actual human cats.

Cherry Bullet – Broken

Their other song’s not bad either, and probably the first non-feature track this year to not completely waste my fucking time.  The inevitable post-first-chorus flatulent rap bullshit dulls proceedings, but only a little.

Weeekly – Ven Para

Thunderous subs and Jiyoon’s image makeover are both worth the effort in this otherwise catastrophic mess, just to see how badly the makers fuck both of these things up.

Viviz – Lemonade

Cool instrumental textures and not too much vocal bullshit help Viviz succeed a little here where most groups fail dismally.  I guess the song only needs to be good enough to make sure you can tolerate it while watching the outstanding video.

Rocket Punch – In My World

Rocket Punch also have a decent non-feature this week, and it’s a non-feature for a reason but it’s still better than almost everything below it in this list.

Olivia Hye – I’ll Be Your Spring

Maybe it’s because I’ve characterised her as a bullying Chuu-hater in my computer games, or maybe it’s because I’ve seen too much Loona TV episodes of her and the other girls screaming incoherently at each other, but this Olivia-Hye-lite treacle show is impossible to swallow, musically or visually.

Cheng Xiao – Lonely Beauty

WJSN’s early visual star reduced to frothy Latin bullshit, and completely wasted.

Adora – The Little Name

Adora’s pretty good even without Eunha as it happens.

The Boyz – Echo

A very cool backing track wrecked by the usual vocal k-pop boyisms.

Amber Liu feat. Jackson Wang – Easier

Definitely a song more on Amber’s side of the fence than Jackson’s, and we’re all the poorer for it.  No wonder he’s hiding himself in sunglasses and Jamiroquai-wear, I’d be afraid to show my face too.

Tempest – Bad News

Nothing all that special but some good bass riffs gives some life to this debut.

Vanner – Rollin’

Bright, sunny and boring.  A little light and shade would have helped.

JO1 – I Can Fly

“For the fans” content 101 strikes again.

Billlie – a sign ~ anonymous

Kind of ridiculously mixed with the huge envelope-filtered bass trying to bust its way into the midrange instead of sitting down low where it belongs.  If you’re going to go that psycho with the bass tone maybe try and get the rest of the song to match it instead of this conservative standing in neat rows bullshit.

Kim Wooseok – Switch

A promising guitar riff is there but it just kind of gets swallowed up in the mix and that’s that.

Youra – Best Regards

Just super boring.

MCND – Player

Pretty much just a bunch of yelling, oh and there’s sportball too if you need another reason to hate it.

Bang Yongguk – Up

Okay, who was the visual designer here who actually thought this looked good, fess up.

Shinji – I Hope

Shades of early T-ara just like her group Koyote’s “Expression“, but she doesn’t really go as all-in here and the result is too much soppiness.

Gaeko x Davichi – Don’t Trust The Dawn

If I were some past-it rapper I’d definitely do a shit ballad with Davichi just so I could sit in the middle in their usual sitting-on-chairs videos.  I’d sing any old bullshit they wanted me to.  Paying your dues has to be worth something I suppose.

Sunye – Love, Ing

I am not love-ing this boring crap.  Wasn’t this the Wonder Girls member who ran off to join a cult or something?  Or was that one of the others?  I guess they were all in a JYP group once so I guess they were actually escaping a cult.

Hong Euijin – The 8th Spring

Warning sign: polaroids.

Bada – Let’s Go Down

Bada’s solo song is kind of grating but it’s still better than anything S.E.S ever did

About – Monster

Pretty impressive visually for something I’ve never heard before and seemingly few others have either, you’ve got to at least love those in-ears.

About – Say Goodbye To The Bad Guys

Ehhhh very boring.  Trying to capture that Wonho ballad energy but he doesn’t have the melody, or the body.

Igloo – Go To The Light

I think this is supposed to be relaxing but pure sine-tones just makes me think of those power electronics tracks where the dude screams about incest or whatever over 10KHz and 25Hz at the same time.

Ahn Yeeun – Yongcheon Cave

Caves are stupid.  Why do you think humanity progressed to houses as soon as we could.  Also, shut up.

WELOVE feat. Anandelight – Flow and Flow

Creepy christian R&B crap.  The good christians are the ones who live quietly, don’t trust the other ones who make a song and dance about how christian they are, at the very least you’re about to get swindled.

Se Young – Silhouette

Cool visual design but horrid falsetto and farting bass can’t carry this tune.

1iL – Dandelion

I’m told by my friendly song-submitter that this guy is from the group History, and I wish he would have stayed there, in every sense.

sogumm & Keumbee – Salt Rain

More videos that look good but that don’t have songs.

Alok, Sonnet, Kim Jun Su – Under the Full Moon

If you are standing behind DJ decks and dancing, you are the problem with society.

Nahyun – Here I Am

Screechy and annoying, I only put it here because of the horses, who are wisely keeping their distance.

Woo Ahan – Only Once

This video looks fantastic and made me want to go to the library and pick up bitches in hanbok until I saw the Kurzweil keyboard and then I just thought about how much those keyboards suck and my boner went away.  Curses, foiled again.

Llano – Point, Line, Plane

She looks unexcited – we can relate.

Seunghey – I did my best

Too much “indie” music in Korea is like this.  Come on Chris P do something about it.  Use the power of Gfriend.

Limit – Cliche Movie

Yeah this is boring too.

Hey Men – Make A Change

The huge amount of idol groups means that Korea has a ton of unemployed dancers who will make your video more interesting for a few bucks.

Broken Lips, Shiner – Heung

Definitely has the feel of another “joke I’m not in on” situation, but even if I understood it I’d still hate it.

Yoon Seo Ryeong – Butterfly

I think this girl was on Miss Trot or one of those shows and she’s very watchable even if her song sucks.

Sleepy, Seo Euichul – What I Want Is Up Above

Don’t worry it’s not more christian crap it’s just the usual lame hip-hop materialistic bullshit.

A-Chess feat. Koonta – Going Home

Not an A-Force subunit, but some typical R&Bing rappers, yawn.  Even a good crab dance couldn’t have livened this up.

Paul Kim – Like Yesterday

It’s that fucking “constipated poop breaking the water in the toilet bowl” noise again, wait for it…

Motte – Confession

The Epiphone Casino (her guitar, not his) is a surprisingly light and comfortable guitar to play for its size (John Lennon loved his for this reason, preferring it over the Gibson equivalent) but it doesn’t handle distortion well at all, those alnico P-90 pickups sound like complete garbage as soon as you introduce any kind of overdrive.  I know because I have the same pickups in my Epi Wildkat and that sounds like shit too.  So when you see one in a music video you can safely rule out anything all that exciting happening.

Flantic feat. Jin Denim – Figure

Nugu Alerters from way back, they’re still nugu and it’s easy to hear why.

Panda Gomm feat. jeebanoff, OBSN – Kill Your Darliings

The song name and thumbnail had my hopes up, but it really is amazaingly just more of that boring shit.  Or maybe not so amazing given how much R&B crap I have to sift through each week to try and find anything decent to show you.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Yua Mikami – Twice “The Feels” dance cover

Yua Mikami might be nice and high on my k-pop bias list but she’s actually pretty low down on my list of preferred JAV stars, mainly due to the fairly obvious facial surgery.  However she still looks better – and thiccer – than almost everyone in k-pop, because nobody’s forcing a shitty diet down her throat along with all the dicks, and even the reducing effect of the black top can’t do much to hide her curves.  Honey Popcorn comeback when.

aespa “Savage” improved version by Kpopalypse

You’ve probably seen this before, but I thought it was worth highlighting again as the subtitles have now been improved a little bit thanks to the work of “The Kpop English Project” who is definitely worth a follow on Twitter if you ever wanted to know what the fuck these people actually meant to say in their songs.  There’s still a few bits I’m rough on (“to the unprepared stage” and “your hallucinations are becoming the reason to construct you” surely must still be mistranslated somewhat) but it’s definitely still an improvement and not just musically!  They’re Korean students so would probably welcome any further input from bilingual caonimas who speak fluent Korean as well as fluent English.

OnlyOne – living together vlog

Those interested in trans stuff might enjoy the YouTube channel of this FTM trans v-logger, who talks about his  top surgery story among other things and the whole channel is English subbed too – but I picked this specific video because just in case you don’t care about that sort of thing, you can still check out how his cat mrcs.

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That’s all for this week!  Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!