Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
For their most recent comeback with “DANG!“, Billlie‘s seven-member lineup has unfortunately been reduced to five due to health hiatuses. It’s also been seven months since their last Korean comeback, which heightened anticipation for their off-kilter energy and oddly addictive melodies, but “DANG!” doesn’t quite get to that same level.
The verses here are pretty standard fare and there’s a solid peppiness to the whole effort, but for a song that gets busier during the chorus, it doesn’t feel like it actually does a whole lot. That’s because their vocals are muddled and there’s almost robotic effects put on them that exacerbate the problem, which leads the chorus to feel mechanical and like it’s droning on as opposed to allowing Billlie to be snappy, addictive, and eccentric, like on some of their previous best.
So despite the nice pop energy to it, “DANG!” didn’t really connect for me. And while I wasn’t enamored with their pre-release track “BYOB“ due to it basically being the latest attempt at recreating “Cupid“, that does hold more replayability to me than “DANG!” in the end.
