Song Review:: CIX: THUNDER FEVER- THUNDER

• Release date: 2025 January 23

• Album tracklist: Bad Moves, THUNDER, Lovers or Enemies, My name is shadow, My Everlasting Sun

• Album runtime: 16 minutes

 Ah, so this group is actually less than a year younger than ATEEZ. And I have been staring at this group's name trying to figure out why I know something about this group, but a brief perusal of the members' profiles (and their names) smacked me about why I know what I know, namely, their main vocalist Seunghun. Fun fact, we both like the band Lucy, but that's not why I know him. He's the one in the Grim Reaper Team on Build Up, the one who rapped during the vocal break of Pray, the blond one. I included the performance with the reactions because the performance deserves the reactions, and as a reminder in case you are only familiar with the Stray Kids cover from Kingdom, that rap is normally covered by two rappers, and it's not an easy rap with two. Changbin, an incredible rapper, covers it on his own. Seunghun is the main vocalist, and not a rapper, and does such a good job that he impressed Eunkwang. So, I just wanted to praise him for that so y'all could know at least one of the members a little if you didn't know anything about them. I think he's pretty cool. Also, with all four of the members on the album artwork, I'm curious about what B.D.U is doing, but that means all three of the members in groups in B.D.U have been doing things outside of B.D.U. I don't know how I feel about this.

Does this song start a capella? Is that actually what I'm hearing? That's very nice. It also ends a capella, with the addition of some thunder, which is legitimately the perfect way to close a song called THUNDER. The funky tones give it a rolling groove that propels the song forward with barely a pause or a slow-down. So, good news, the pounding beat does a very good job of marching the song forward. The downside is that the song doesn't have a lot of variation through the middle. The a capella bookends do a good job of keeping the song multi-dimensional.

Their voices are a great match for the style and genre of the song. Weirdly, though, I think the rap section is the most interesting part of the song for the members. I know. It's as much a surprise to me as it likely is to you as well. I really like the rapping verse of this song, because it has such a different texture to the rest of the song. Everything else is polished and strong, with some fascinating vocal layers. I don't think this is a song I'm going to want to listen to on repeat, but I'm almost positive that it is going to be a song that when it pops up in a playlist, I'm going to smile listening to.

Storyline! Narrative! Magic! They've got a couple of different costumes in the song, my favorite of which is the dark set where they're dancing in the street under the lanterns. They wear them a few more times, and they look so good in them. Excellent dancers. The CGI is a little shiny, and I don't particularly like it, but in general, good solid music video.