Song Review:: X:IN: Hyper- Dazzle Flash

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  • Release date: 2026 February 20
  • Album tracklist: Dazzle Flash, No Clarity, Coming Home, Who Dat, Dazzle Flash - Instrumental, No Clarity - Instrumental, Coming Home - Instrumental, Who Dat - Instrumental
  • Album runtime: 25 minutes

 Good news, everyone! This group is so not on Underage protocol that there are multiple members with a one in front of their birth year! And the maknae turned twenty the year they debuted! This is fantastic. I am fascinated with the runtimes though. Ignoring the fact that the title track is just over two and a half minutes for a second, there are two sets of songs that have the same runtime, and they're paired in an ABBA...I almost called it a rhyme scheme, but I suppose it is sort of. But that's the sort of thing that feels deliberate, you know?

That scream at the beginning startled my cat. He paused purring for about two seconds, which is momentous because PJ purrs in his sleep. The rest of the instrumental, the occasional scream and squeal aside, is a very techno video game soundtrack kind of instrumental. I'm not complaining about it. I love tracks that sound like something out of an action game and this weirdly sounds like a side-scrolling beat-em-up, but specifically once you've gotten to a boss battle where you're fighting a giant robot skull that also has attached arms that rip through the background artwork to attack your character and you're having to spend most of your time dodging lasers.

Here's the thing. As we know, I'm not a big fan of the sing-songy style of singing and we get two different kinds in two different spots, including for the chorus, which ups the amount of aural repetition in the song. I should be very not happy with this song and with this being my first introduction to this group, I should be dismissing them as a group to be interested in. And yet there's something here that despite things I'm not a fan of being so prevalent in the song makes me curious about the rest of their discography. I don't know what's going on, but I'll start with the rest of this album. 

This music video reminds me of a combination of Dune and The Fifth Element, which is not a combination I ever thought I'd be saying, but here we are.

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