Fat birb

- I’ve listened all the way thru maybe.... 4 times? and like 7 other times with the 1min preview version

- each time I listen, I don’t really enjoy itt but then while I’m not listening I keep thinking the album is growing on me and that the songs are dope????

The good:

- the album overall isn’t bad. It’s more cohesive than voodoo by FAR. No one song outshines (jk Mistress does, but how sad if your intro track is the best on the album)

- more harmonies!!!

- I actually like the ballads on this album (I hate all their other ones that are done by Melodesign b/c they sound like OSTs and vixx’s voices weren’t good enough to balance that out)

- you can really hear the members’ growth and they sound more like a unit.

- line distribution

- hongbin and hyuk FINALLY sound confident singing, now if hak can get there we’ll be golden

- they clearly worked hard on the album and sound like they had fun recording the songs

The bad:

- I think the production is noisy, corny, dated, and doesn’t match the amount vixx has grown

- I was honestly expecting a more... musical album? Like we know that they’re a performance group and their strength is concerts but like... did this one really have to be just concert songs..... that’s a matter of personal preference tho. I listen to a lot of trip hop, trance music, jazz-infused hip hop, pbr&b which tend to be really careful about instrumentals so when I wanna hear music, I like instrumentals to be well-layered and grounded in some “organic” sound (piano, violin, bass, etc). Ofc I listen to a lotta songs to jam to (usually with heavy bass and/or a real heavy, repetitive beat), BUT when I see jelpi trying to set vixx up as ~artists~ by giving them a lot of independence and creative input, I would’ve expected the album to be more... gentle? have more musicality in the instrumentation? Their voices sound so GOOD but the bg music ruins it for me

- none of the songs stand out at all. On one hand that’s good b/c of cohesiveness but that also means there are no peaks in the album... it’s just... flat, idk. At least in voodoo, messy as it was, I could pinpoint “oh this is good for this reason, and this other song is good for this reason” but for chaind up every single song is like “oh this is fun.” “ah this isn’t bad” “hmmm not bad!” Like I have no excitement for whole songs. The title song for ex: I LOVE the first 40 seconds, but then it changes tone from an EXO bop to a SHINee reject

- basically I wish Brand New Music’s producers worked with them again b/c it could’ve been a cleaner, more mature version of the LR album (which I loved musically)

I think that’s it... verbalized everything...

It’s a perfectly FINE album but if it wasn’t vixx I wouldn’t give it more than 2 listens. I don’t think I’m gonna buy it, there’s too much stuff in the album & I don’t like the music enough. Honestly I would’ve been in love if they used different producers... they sound SO good vocally but I really hate this wannabe-SM vibe I’m getting (since the producers and some writers work primarily in SM anyway).