Song Review:: THE BOYZ: Trigger- Trigger

• Release date: 2024 October 28

• Album tracklist: Bite Back, TRIGGER, bAd, Slip Away, Re-Wind, They See Me Dream

• Album runtime: 18 minutes

 I've seen them live. That wasn't in my plans, but, well, they were doing a concert the night before KCon and I had nothing else to do, so I went. It's actually a really funny set of circumstances that led me to deciding to go, but that's neither here nor there. I'm just glad I got to see them before the enlistments start up for the group. I will say, though, that Eric and Kevin are hilarious. Eric in particular. He may have lost some of his filtering abilities being on his home turf...in front of his mom. I laughed a lot.

There is a lot happening in the instrumentals. They're very dramatic and with much theatrical aplomb with some very surprising elements. Hidden underneath all the electronic dance trappings, there's a brass instrument that I'm trying to identify. My first thought was trumpet, but it's much too low for that. I think it might be a trombone, which is definitely interesting. As common an instrument as it is in orchestral arrangements, it's not one I have been hearing a lot of with K-Pop. And speaking of orchestral, we've got some dramatic strings sweeping their way into the instrumentals, as well as a plinked piano. There's also one section where we get audience participation snapping, which is cool, and we also have an allowed acapella where the harmonies get to shine.

I'm a firm proponent of the idea that when you have a group with significant numbers of members, the majority of their songs should take advantage of the high numbers to build in beautiful, intricate harmonies. Why have only a two or three part harmony, when you could have a 6-8 part harmony? Or more? This song doesn't have that spectacular (here the connotation is more related to an actual spectacle) of a harmony, but they do have some very interesting things going on. There's a little bit of a sense of  2012-2014 SHINee to the song, though the tone is very different. SHINee has inimitable voices, but THE BOYZ have some very good vocalists of their own, and multiple of them get let loose during Trigger, which is always something I look forward to.

This is an excellent example of how to set a stage. I got concept. I got storyline. I got genre. I got all of that in the first five seconds. That is how you do it. I feel like their characters here and Seventeen's (most of them anyway) from Maestro would be allies. They're both cyberpunk, but where one is Blade Runner, the other is Cyberpunk 2077. I absolutely love the choreography of this song. Love it. I'd guess it's probably in my top ten choreography for the year, and the music video uses it just enough that we still get plenty of story, but they also show off what they are known for.