Song Review:: V01D: 01- ROCKROCK {Pre-Debut}

-

  • Release date: 2026 March 03
  • Album tracklist: ROCKROCK, ROCKROCK Instrumental
  • Album runtime: 6 minutes

 So, as a debuting group, I need to figure out who they are. First of all, this is a band and all of the members are over 180 cm. One of them is a former member of the band 2Z. Three of the members are twenty-four or older, the other two do not have birth years attached to them, but given the age of the others, I'm tentatively inclined to not put them on Underage Protocol. I'm fully willing to later once we get ages, but for now, I won't. And it's an auspicious start to their careers that their pre-debut song is over three minutes.

The electric guitar is fully front and center in this instrumental. I'm excited to see how this supports the vocals because while there's quite a lot of steady movement going on with the melody, it doesn't have enough movement to be the main star of the show, AKA the song as a whole. Still, what we have in this part, which I get to listen to because they included the instrumental and I'm grateful for that. There are also some much quieter parts to this that allow the song to have depth to it. 

Twenty-one seconds before the vocals start up. There is so much vibrato in this song that I'm nearly giddy about it, and that vocalist has got a very clear voice. It sounds like there may be two vocalists, and I don't remember I when I checked up on them if there were more than one. Still, I'm very pleased with this. I'm always interested when another band comes on the scene and this one has a particular resonance with the 2009 alt rock, which makes sense since the people who had that embedded as part of their identity are old enough to be writing the music now. But the magic formula of any song is the vocals, that, here, are solid with some interesting fun little bits.

Okay, I deeply, deeply love that their names and instruments are attached to their faces. Love that so much. I wish more debut and pre-debut music videos did that because it's quite valuable to someone who is interested in getting to know the members. I'm also quite pleased with both the production value of this music video and with the fact that we get a storyline with the music video. I'm specifically a fan of their white outfits in the latter part of the music video. But generally, they seem cute and they seem fun, and while I'm not in the market for a new band right now, I will be keeping an eye on them because bands in general are a valuable addition to the kpop ecosystem.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The World of K-Pop in 2025

-
Image
 Come one, come all to the 2025 recap from your 15th favorite Fangirl! We had a lot of very fun and special moments throughout the year and some absolutely killer albums dropped. This is going to be a beast of a post, so please buckle up. I will attempt to be entertaining, but that means there may be puns and quips involved. I'm also going to scatter random stages from this year throughout the post, just to break things up, and so you can have some music, although I did include that big playlist that I was forming throughout the year. I also included the pet tax, because I talk about them often across all sorts of posts, so you can look forward to that.  Here's your first brain break! Make sure that you've got something to drink! Reading is thirsty work! I'm going to break this up into sections so you can Ctrl+F your way through to each section depending on your interests and how much time you have. And I'll give you a table of contents, because I love table of cont...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: ONEWE: AuRoRa

-
Image
 Submission! Submission! Submission! Whoo! I thought this might be a good spot for this, so thank you for your patience! And when I'm finished with this, I'll head over to Threads and send it your way since you wonderfully left a username for me to deliver it to. I actually like ONEWE. And it's funny, after the administrative work and remodeling I did (some of it quite extensive) on almost all of these posts, I'm looking for something that hits my brain to do after this one (since I'd done some planning before I decided I temporarily hated myself). So I'm just listening to my playlists. And other people's playlists. And watching videos on YouTube looking for a sparked song. But I had another ONEWE song come up that caught my attention, and then I remembered that that would be after this one, so I couldn't. As of writing this paragraph, I'm still looking. But I just thought that was kind of funny. ONEWE is a five-member band currently under RBW that r...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: VIXX: VOODOO DOLL

-
Image
 This comes from my submission form, and it's the first one I'm doing from there! Whoo! I was going to put this off a little because I just did a 2012 debut for a Battle of the B-Sides post, but oh, well! I have a feeling that this one isn't like that song either, so I'm less worried about doing too much of the same. Variety, yes, but I can do what I want and the few songs I've already heard of theirs ( Chained Up is in many of my playlists) I've liked already. How much of that is because I know they're in the 2012 debut club, which automatically enters them into my category of groups I look upon favorably, I don't know. But I do know that even without that, what I've heard is very good. I've also heard some interesting and hilarious things about the group, and am curious to know if they're true or not. But! This submission came with the note that the submitter was pretty sure this song was VIXX's first win and that was why it was being ...
Read more

Song Review:: AM8IC: LUKOIE- Link Up {Debut}

-
Image
Release date: 2025 November 10 Album tracklist: Paracosm, Link Up , Escher, Buzzin' , LUKOIE, Black Moon Album runtime: 15 minutes   There are two pre-debut songs I have to cover, because with The Show vanishing and ASC being canceled, the rookies and the smaller groups need more active attention than ever if they want to have a shot at surviving. If they’re good, I want to help introduce more people to them. The whole lot of them are twenty-one or older, which is great. All of them are also Chinese, which is kind of cool. One of them is a Carat, so I automatically like him. Fingers crossed. I did get up early to vote on The Show and heard them perform. Live vocals, which was good. Supported some of my grumping, which is less good. And now that I’m awake again (for good this time, and properly awake), I don’t remember what they sounded like other than some breathing in the mics. That’s no shade to them; I fell back asleep after my alarm and the only reason that I woke up to even...
Read more

Song Review:: Moon (tripleS): msnz - Cameo Love

-
Image
Release date: 2025 November 24 Album tracklist: Magic Shine New Zone, Fly Up, Cameo Love, Bubble Gum Girl, Q&A, Christmas Alone Album runtime: 15 minutes  This subunit I can listen to all I want, so hopefully this song is one I really like. Keeping track of this group feels like it should almost be a full-time job, so for those of you who are fans, you have my respect. The annoying thing is that even if you remove the song that's less than a minute long, the average is still under three minutes.  So this is a problem. There is something about this song that is interacting unfortunately with my brain. I started off with a lot of like for the song but at some point, something about this song started to set my teeth on edge. I think it's the combination of the beat with the higher keyboard that is bothering. It's an unstable instrumental. Even though we do occasionally have something that's a little heavier, it doesn't weigh down the song at all, and with the speed...
Read more

Song Review:: EPITHYMiA: UP- Turn Up {Japanese}

-
Image
Release date: 2025 March 15 Album tracklist:  Climb Up , Turn Up, Climb Up - Instrumental ver., Turn Up - Instrumental ver. Album runtime: 14 minutes  Okay! This is going to sound a bit convoluted. They have an album coming out in December. That album will have all of their songs they've released since debut. This one came from their one-year-anniversary single released back in March,  and now has both an English version and this music video. I don't actually know which one was the title track. I'm assuming the other one because it has slightly more streams on Spotify? But I did really like the first song I reviewed for them ( found here ), and I'm bound and determined to shout about them from the rooftops. I think you may be confused as to why I'm suddenly reviewing, and championing if I'm being honest, a J-Pop group because I've been trying to keep this mostly Korean for my own sanity. That's fair. I also am a little baffled, and yet, here I am with t...
Read more

Song Review:: fromis_9: White Memories

-
Image
Release date: 2025 December 02 Album tracklist:  White Memories Album runtime: 3 minutes  If this isn't a Christmas/winter song, I will be so sad. It looks like it should be. The title looks like it should be. But we have had a dearth since I started the Christmas/winter list of songs, and I want more of them. I also really hope that fromis_9 is doing well and happy in their new home.  It sounds like one. So I think this is in fact a duck. I do have to say that I'm a little bit surprised that we have a few different song shifts and transitions because that's not the most common thing with this genre of song, but I like it. You know what else I like? This song uses the full three minutes of song to do something with them. Instruments come in and out. It ends somewhat decisively like a firm nod. It's just pleasant. Their voices. This is the real reason why I like this genre because we get a lot of big vocals and demonstrations of vibrato, both of which we get here. There ...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: TraxX: Oh! My Goddess

-
Image
 Yes, this is the name that the group turned into, but when the song was released, they were just going by "TRAX", which is how I'm going to refer to them throughout this post. The only reason I know that this band exists is because of the band 20th Century Boys, because one of them  started out as a member of TRAX. So this is going to be interesting because I haven't heard of any of their songs. Got this suggestion from someone sending me a message on Tumblr, which was a delight because the band is older than almost every new idol that has debuted in the last two years. Not all of them, but most of them, and it makes me happy to run into a fan of an older group and also for introducing me and a lot of other people to this band. I am very much looking forward to this. So TRAX is a band that debuted under SM back in 2004, and they've had a bit of a tumultuous history. This song is the title track of their second mini album after they went down to two. Released in 2...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: NewJeans: Super Shy

-
Image
 Before anyone comes at me with pitchforks and torches and chases me up a rickety windmill before setting fire to it for me to dramatically fall in a blaze of heartrending glory (I've been thinking a lot about the end of Frankenstein 1932 if you cannot tell), I'm labeling this as a b-side because it was a pre-release of an album, not the actual title track. You may also be wondering why, at this point in the year, I'm covering a NewJeans song when according to my own rules, I won't listen to groups if they had too many members debut underage or if they had members debut too young, both of which actually still apply to this group for a few more months but will soon be removed from the U.P list so that I can actually dig into their discography. To which I say, Underage Protocol does not apply to the Greatest Hits or the Battle of the B-Sides. If you're also curious about the timing, it has been almost two years, two very long, stressful years. No matter what I or any...
Read more

Song Review:: ALLDAY PROJECT: ALLDAY PROJECT- LOOK AT ME

-
Image
Release date: 2025 December 08 Album tracklist: ONE MORE TIME , LOOK AT ME , YOU AND I, WHERE YOU AT, HOT, MEDUSA Album runtime: 17 minutes  Congrats on the first full album! I'm really tired and we all may know by now that they're on Underage Protocol because of certain choices in styling and speech. Will I pull them off? Eventually maybe. It depends if they reflect and stop doing that. Although apparently I was a top listener of FAMOUS on YouTube Music this year, which is wildly hilarious. I'll have to check again later and update this if needed, but with the runtime, it looks like it may be close to the 18 minute mark. I'm not positive though, so I'm putting it as 17 for now. It also looks like we may have some solo action going on? I can't listen to it because of the aforementioned U.P., but that's an interesting choice for a group that hasn't hit the one year mark if true. Although funny, every time I see the title, that audio starts playing. I hone...
Read more