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

Stray Kids – CASE 143

Fact: no song of any worth ever has, or ever will, contain anywhere in it, the words “no cap”.

Seulgi – 28 Reasons

It’s amazing how good even a slower song can sound when the songwriters actually stick to one melodic and harmonic style.  Sure, the song also has a lot of stupidity (the stupid whistling, the even more stupid breakdown, the even more stupid again vocal showing off for no reason) but consistency of tone still saves the day – just.

Seulgi feat. BE’O – Bad Girl, Sad Girl

This is shit tho.

TREASURE – Hello

Someone at YG decided to write an actual song for their newest boy group.  Sure it’s generic but I’ll take generic and competent over groundbreaking and awful.

Rolling Quartz – NAZABABARA

Someone told Rolling Quartz that they weren’t “k-pop” enough, so they have a crack at doing the kind of disjointed mess that k-pop groups are mostly known for in 2022, but with rock instruments.  It doesn’t really work.

N.flying – The Night

However, at least they tried to rock.  Can’t say the same for N.sleeping here.  By the way what the fuck is a “track video” and how does this differ from a regular music video, this I ask.

Rocket Punch – Doki Doki Love

From any other group this would be acceptable but it’s Rocket Punch so I expected better.

CocaNButter – Mi Deh Yah

According to my song list submitter this is a dance crew crossing over into original songs, which never works.  Just like that other group that started off as a dance group but crossed over into original songs, whose name I’ve forgotten and so have you because they also sucked.

LE SSERAFIM Chaewon, Yunjin x Salem Ilese – Good Parts (when the quality is bad but i am)

Yes that’s actually the title of the song.  They really weren’t kidding about the quality.

IRRIS – Bye Bye

There’s nothing drastically wrong with this song other than it’s way too slow, I recommend playing at 1.75x speed for best results.

KOYOTE – Soulmate

Seeing older k-pop idols do “cute concepts” is great, there should be way more of it.  Heart heart boing boing pay my mortgage uwu

KOYOTE – My Hero

There’s no way this huge-ass stage was built just for Koyote, they’re obviously just one act on a huge festival line-up, but Koyote themselves aren’t going to tell you that because then this video would look a lot less impressive.

YOYOMI – Stupid Love

Yoyomi says sorry for being all raunchy in her last comeback and scaring your grandparents, so she now has a new video so you can show it to them and get them back on side.  Don’t tell them that you blew a load to this one too.  Also shout out to Yoyomi’s social rehabilitation outreach program that re-employs ex-gang members with low prospects in the legitimate economy as tambourine players.  Everyone deserves a second chance at life, man.

JAMIE – 3D Woman

While we’re on the subject of re-employing the unemployable, it’s good to see that Scott Morrison finally stopped illegally squatting in Kirribilli House after being evicted from the Australian Prime Ministership and got himself a new job being one of Jamie’s bouncers.  Whatever you do, don’t try to sneak into a Jamie gig via boat, he’ll stop you for sure.

DKZ – Uh-Heung

Do DKZ finally have a good song?  Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pacy and it doesn’t insert random bits from the Ghostbusters theme in it, so that’s at least two steps in the right direction.

T1 X Raider, THE BOYZ – Last Man Standing

They’re walking somewhere, but where are they going?  Not to play some shit computer game I hope.

KINGDOM – Long Live The King

Kingdom are back to doing what they do best, which is dressing up in period clothes, and that’s a definite fetish of mine so I approve.  If there was a female equivalent to this group I would stan them religiously, but there really isn’t, so I guess I’ll just have to be gay for Kingdom until then, I’m okay with this.

AB6IX – Sugarcoat

I’ve been bulking a bit too much while working out lately, so last week I quit all snacking between meals and all chocolate and sweets except on one day per week.  I’ve bookmarked this video just in case I start caving because the candy depicted here paired with this music is a real turn-off and definitely will help me control any cravings.

ONEWE – Still Here

Actually the song improves as it goes on, but what’s really impressive here is the colour-matching.  I wonder how many hours in the Bad Thoughts Room one of those kids would have earned if they turned up to the video shoot with a bright green guitar. 

The Rose – Sour

Imagine these guys turning up to ONEWE’s video.  They would get multiple days of punishment, surely.

JO1 – SuperCali

I was literally right in the middle of writing my usual lame dad-joke tier bullshit about how “supercali’ is surely a shortened version of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and then it turned out to be fucking true.  When the song is even more of a joke than I am, you know it’s got issues.

Kang Daniel – Joy Ride

I like the little blue car, it reminded me of how when I was a kid I always wanted a go-kart for some reason.  Clearly I was an idiot and I should have been beaten more.

LIMELIGHT – Paradise

I really have to do a double-check and triple-check that the girl with the pigtails isn’t based ex-Starship trainee and Kpopalypse intervieweee Kim Nayoon every time I look at this group, and each time I’m only marginally convinced that it isn’t her.  This of course makes me completely forget about listening to the music, and in this case that’s not such a bad thing.

LIMELIGHT – Cha Cha

I wonder if this video is a look inside the “paradise diner” which we get to see each and every week from the outside for some reason.

D-Hack feat. Swervy – Run The Star

Swervy’s part starts at 1:41 you’re welcome.

Suzy – Cape

I’m pretty sure that if you watch this video all the way through you turn to stone like in that one Beatles cartoon.

Serri – Like

Someone gave her a guitar as a present, that’s pretty cool, if anyone’s planning on doing that for me can it please be the Ibanez QX527PB thanks because I don’t like how Ovation acoustics have that rounded back that always slides off my leg when I’m sitting down and playing.

Dbo feat. Digital Dev, Ted Park – CHXPSTIX

Here’s a video just so you know what I’m talking about.  I’ve always shied away from seven string guitars because of the extra weight, but the Ibanez Quest series are all super-light so that wouldn’t be an issue here and I could finally learn how to play that djent garbage.

Royal 44 – Movie

Although I am curious to try out the Strandbergs because they have more colour options and they also have the “Endurneck” which is supposed to be some fancy guitar neck which is more ergonomic or whatever.  I’ve never seen a Strandberg in my country though, whereas Ibanez are actually obtainable.

99PRBLM, Tha Rift, 9F – Lil Curry

Mind you djent metal does kind of suck so something like this 6-string would actually be fine.  Beggars can’t be choosers.

Jiae – Love is Love

Some not bad sounds here pity it’s wasted on some lame R&B rubbish, oh well.

LUCY – Some Day in the 21century

Imagine Unlucky Morpheus if they moved to Korea and someone told them “just tone it down about 57 notches would you, we’re all very stressed out over here can you make something more background-music-ish”.

DooRi – Beonggeul

Making a cake with Korean letters on it probably seems normal if you’re Korean but to me it just looks like someone got upset that they lost at Jenga and dropped a couple blocks in the cake mix.  Mind you I’m sure that our letters look like that to non-English speakers too.

EruhWa – The Red Moon

In the Wonho game “Wars And Roses” the characters all have this weird stare where they turn their heads in your direction and stare right at you in every scene, and every time the camera angle snaps to another location they readjust their heads with the same gradual drifting motion that starts off fast and slows down as it hits the zero point.  EruhWa here gives off very similar vibes, which probably means nothing to most of you, but the few of my readers who also bought that terrible game will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Miss. Jung – All right

One way to make trot better is to make it as fast as possible and Miss Jung has the right idea.

Sia Jiwoo feat. $UN – D.I.M.O.W

Lots of effort went into this but it’s just so meh.

Huckleberryfinn – Tempest

This song was originally on an OST and it shows.

H-Eugene feat. Yabbi – I’m Not There

Wow it’s the old-school T-ara style template, I dig it.

GroovyRoom, GEMINI, Mirani – Rollin’

This video looks like it’s been built out of default 3D engine textures because nobody could be bothered filling them in.  Who can blame them.

Mia – Island

Nice baking skills, come and take a lookie, at Mia’s place only, come get some.

Kanto – Veteran

It’s okay but why is the beat mixed so low?  It’s like awful live rap concerts where for some reason the vocal mics are loud as shit and the beat is mixed super quiet to be a weak shadow behind everything else.  I was so devastated when I saw rap music live for the first time and all I could hear was vocals and hardly any backing track.  It’s almost like music doesn’t matter to rappers because almost none of them are musicians or have any real clue what music even is.  Oh wait.

OUREALGOAT – Even in pain

Even in pain, they are still not the GOAT.

Jambinai – Once more from that frozen bottom

Holy crap this is great.  I mean Jambinai are never bad basically, but a 4 minute long Jambinai song that starts like a fucking explosion and fucking rips shit up is better than their usual ultra-long slow building jam fest.  If you don’t stan Jambinai that’s a you problem.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

RUMKICKS interview: PUNK ROCK FROM SOUTH KOREA, DISCREDITED AS WOMEN IN PUNK BECAUSE OF LOOKS

An excellent interview with Korean punk band Rumkicks, notice how much better interviews go in music scenes that are not k-pop, where people don’t get questions vetted and can ask and answer as they like.  Even with the broken English (I would have preferred a Korean-language interview with subs, so we could get to see the Rumkicks girls be more articulate and comfortable, but oh well) this is still a way better interview than you’ll find anywhere in the commercial end of the k-pop scene (apart from mine of course ahem).

Loona – Love Battery

Personally I would have liked it more if they kept the beat like the original, it’s not as good as Orange Caramel’s version.  It’s still cool to see Loona do something like this though, even if that dance break is shamefully awful and the shitty arrangement kind of wrecks the track.

Girls Generation – Genie

“Genie” isn’t the first k-pop song that I ever heard (that would probably be H.O.T’s abysmal “We Are The Future“) but it was definitely the first one that I heard that I also liked.  I came across it because I’d picked up a compilation DVD from Melbourne’s MediaAsia store that had about ten versions of this song because it was the most recently released song of theirs at the time, and a whole bunch of Girls’ Generation’s other tracks.  Of course after only about two plays through the DVD I was thoroughly sick of this song because it was on the DVD so much, plus the chorus is quite repetitive as well, there’s not really a lot to it, so it got old fucking quick.  Fortunately some of their other songs were a bit more interesting because if they weren’t I probably wouldn’t have investigated k-pop further at all, and you wouldn’t be reading this right now.  Although I’m sure some of you would probably be grateful, but think how empty your life would be without my reviews to complain about.

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