Guess who finally made a Facebook account! Click here to follow the page for new posts and updates!

With my focus on debuts for majority of October, I have been unable to cover a wide range of new releases in KPOP due to time constraints. As previously specified, I will be slowly catching up on reviews as much as possible. Today’s focus is on WEi, who made their comeback a month ago with their new single Spray and their 5th mini-album, Love Pt. 2: Passion. This is the first time we are seeing WEi on stage since their Too Bad comeback and their Japanese debut with Maldives earlier this year (yet to be reviewed, but will be soon).

WEi reverts back to the edgy and tough-guy sound of KPOP with the release of Spray. I find this to be a little disappointing, given that I thought WEi was excelling with their brighter pop releases that they have more recently released (i.e. Too Bad and Bye Bye Bye). While reverting back to old sounds isn’t necessarily a bad move, I can’t help but think that Spray fails to really standout in the current crowd of KPOP releases and ultimately feels generic. Spray definitely had the foundations to be a successful track and there was opportunities for it to go big. The producers just missed the opportunities to concentrate this song into something more intense and impactful. And I feel the instrumental could have been boosted had the producers opted for (or at least experimented with) some more interesting and unique synths, rather than the standard ones we get in most dance tracks. The short dance break after the second chorus had the right idea, with a slightly different synth as a central piece. I also feel like the vocalists could have left a deeper impression in Spray, had the melodies been more developed and provide a more memorable ring to Spray. I feel like their parts were underbaked and more like a fizzle than a decent ‘spray’. But as always, I do want to point out some moments within Spray that I thought were quite good. The opening and end of Spray had this low groan-like “Love“, which I personally thought was intriguing. The chorus had a good set up with the line by line switching of vocals and rapping. The “Spray … Spray” hook ended up being quite memorable in my books. As it is a more edgy type of song, the rappers really stood out strong in Spray. They were given a more prominent role in the song, and I was impressed with the intensity they had delivered. The high note also shows promise from the vocal department (just a pity that their parts weren’t as stirring), and I really liked concentration of everything right after the final chorus and just before the final moments of Spray (this was what I was looking for when I mentioned concentrating the song earlier). Overall, I feel that Spray could have done more in some regards to not be a mix bag.

When I thought of the edgy and touch-guy sound, along with the title, I instantly thought graffiti and an underground-like premise to the video, leading to an industrial setting. And we pretty much got just that, just without as much graffiti as I had expected. There also seems to be a bit of a story to the video, with the members running at one point from a machine (and then confronting it), and some contraption of some kind was being built/installed to blow something up. I am just not too sure of the specifics of the storyline. But it did look cool. Another thing that looked cool was the instant switch between dry and wet environment during the bridge. It goes well with the title and was probably the most memorable aspect of this music video.

The key point of the choreography was the spray can action they did with their hand, which I thought was clever and highly relevant for this release. The rest of the routine was quite good and intense. They did a good job of selling that edgy and tough guy concept on stage.

Song – 7/10
Music Video – 7.5/10
Performance – 8/10
Overall Rating – 7.4/10