CIX has quite a busy year already with their early 2021 comeback, Cinema and Hello Chapter Ø: Hello, Strange Dream, Japanese release All For You and their Universe track Tesseract (which I will review, one day). But the year is still young. So why not add a studio album to the mix? Well, that is exactly what CIX did. Earlier this week, the five member male group from C9 Entertainment made their official comeback with their first ever studio-length album, Ok Prologue: Be Ok, which is headlined by their new single, WAVE.

WAVE is a fine song. However, it is another example of a song where more could have been done to really make it more appealing. WAVE starts off as a standard and light EDM song. Nothing more, nothing less. This isn’t much an issue, though I would have liked it the song was more exciting from the first second. But I won’t let that get in the way of enjoying WAVE, as the song has to start from somewhere. The issue with WAVE was more so the pre-choruses. I felt the rapping segment would have been fine as the launching pad into the chorus and it felt like the instrumentation behind the rapping segment was gearing up for that launch. However, for some reason, the producers of the song felt it was necessary to delay and suspend that obvious building momentum by inserting another vocal part just before the actual chorus, which in turn fizzled out any momentum the song had. I felt like they could have forgone the vocals (sorry Yonghee) and used the vocal sequence’s instrumentation as a backing for the rap sequence to drive us forward into the chorus. Similar comments can be said about the second verse. Thankfully, the chorus managed to compensate for that fizzled and lackluster pre-chorus that WAVE opted for and I like how much swing there was to the momentum within the chorus. I do think the chorus’s EDM could have been more impactful and intense, but I still enjoyed it as it is. What we got was rather pleasant, which seems to be odd given the song taps into the rougher forms of EDM, but that is how I would describe the chorus. The second and final choruses are followed by ‘Like Thunder, Thunder‘ hooks, which I quite liked. They were catchy and relatively powerful moments in WAVE that stood out. It also continued the chorus’ momentum which I had pointed out earlier in a very satisfying manner and didn’t stray away from the pleasant side of WAVE. Similar comments can be made to the vocals and rapping, as a whole. Overall, WAVE was enjoyable. There were some issues with the structure of the song, but that didn’t really ruin the song.

WAVE is all about going forward at your own pace while going beyond rough waves (i.e. the various experiences that try to stop you from moving forward). In the music video, we see the members build a boat and prepare for the adventure together. The members then embark through the rough waves mentioned just now and battles them together. Beyond the rough waves, there is this calmness and ethereal place that the members were aiming for. Regarding the ending, I am assuming it is connected to Numb, one of their earlier works, based on the school uniform. Though I am not entirely sure what that has to do with this music video and how everything thus far is connected (because they are all connected somehow, if I remember). I also like how the choreography scenes and the brighter atmosphere brought on Summer vibes, matching the current season.

I like bursts of energy and intensity in the choreography for this comeback. It makes it an enjoyable stage to watch. Visually, I feel like this is a good look for the group in terms of outfits, aside from the sailor outfits, which makes them look like overgrown kids in children outfits.

Song – 7.5/10
Music Video – 8/10
Performance – 8/10
Overall Rating – 7.8/10