Song Review:: ARTMS: BURN- BURN

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  • Release Date: 2025 April 04
  • Album tracklist: Light It Up, BURN
  • Album runtime: 4 minutes

 I just want everyone to know that the album runtime is deceptive. This song, the title track, is over three minutes long. The other one is little more than an introduction to the title track. This song also got delayed by a week because of the wildfires that were ongoing during the original release date and it would have been highly insensitive given the title of the song. Understandably. This is also the first review I've done of this group that I kind of consider to be a subunit of LOONA due to the composition of the group. I don't know if they technically are or not, but in my own personal classifications, they are. Also, I love their lightstick. It's one of the coolest ones out there. I don't know if I will ever get to go to a concert, but I think they're cool enough that I still want one. Seriously. Go look those suckers up. I'm kind of jealous of their fans.

Normally, I'd describe the breathing-esque sound that's woven inextricably into the instrumentals as watery or like what we'd get from scuba diving, but there's isn't the weight to it that other similar sounds usually have. Which is surprisingly appropriate given that the song is BURN and smoke has a much lower density typically than water. The rest of what's going on there is surprisingly minimalistic and sparse. Most of the song has one beat happening at a time and then one, maybe two other instruments stacked on top of the drums. 

They've got beautiful, ephemeral voices here that are complimented very well by the instrumentals while also being fairly well supported by their breath. There is at least one of the members who contributes to the song with a gorgeously low voice, which provides an excellent contrasting texture to the rest of the song and instantly holds the song down. I'm actually getting some interesting late second gen vibes off their voices here, which is something that I personally really like to see, specifically EXID, but I don't know if that's because I was just listening to them or if they actually do remind me of them.

Yo, the subtitles tell you who is singing what part! Nice! I just have to say that as someone who lived through the Millennial "non-eyebrows", I have to say that I find the limited eyebrows in this concerning. Please, stylists, let them have distinguishable eyebrows. The music video really fits the minimalism of the instrumentals, which really turns this into more of a performance video than a music video.



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