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Another artist who has been away from the stage for a long time (i.e., 1 year and 6 months) is GHOST9. We last saw them promotions of X-Ray in April 2022. Well, that is the case if you only count releasing new music. If you consider other work more broadly, GHOST9 did appear on the survival show PEAK TIME earlier this year. At the end of October, the group returned with their 7th mini-album, Arcade: O, and the title track RUCKUS.

RUCKUS is a fair song. For the most part, the song feels pretty standard and doesn’t really offer anything new to the KPOP scene. I do like the funkiness the instrumental has to offer. The backing and vocal work of the first verse and first half of the chorus is a good example of this energy. But while it does continue to recur in RUCKUS, the producers of the song don’t really capitalise on it and opted to include some typical electronic dance elements instead that takes away from the song’s funkiness potential and made it feel pretty ordinary all over. A good example of this typicalness kicks in in the second half of the chorus and the background of the second verse. This I found to be boring and bland. I also find RUCKUS‘ hooks and melodies also contribute to the ordinary nature of the song. Similarly the vocals and rapping for the most part throughout RUCKUS required to bring it all to life has a similar effect. The only other aspect of RUCKUS that I like aside from the funky instrumentation is the anthem-like chant in the bridge. That was pretty catchy and is a nice relief from the ordinariness that RUCKUS exudes elsewhere in the song.

The music video for RUCKUS sees the members being inserted into an underground hockey game and pitted against each other, while some hooded figures watch the game. Following the game, the group are held in a room, where they fight one another. But before anything major breaks out, it looks like the room fills up with gas that knocks them out. After that, they wake up and prepare for a second competition of parkour. But it is during this competition that all 8 members make a run for it. It is later revealed that fight they had was fake and they were hatching a plan to escape. They end up facing the hooded figures in the end and fight them to win back their freedom, which they are successful in doing. While I think this is decent story line, I think it could be teased out a bit more and I wish it had not been crammed into just a 3 and half minute video.

The choreography looks good. Again, I don’t see anything that stands out as a major move. But it is still a decent routine that works well with the song. I did find it a bit odd that the members didn’t have similar hairstyles like in the music video. While I didn’t mention it above, the glow we got from their hairstyles at the end of the music video could potentially be iconic had more people seen it, and the stage performances would have been a great conduit for that.

Song – 7/10
Music Video – 8.5/10
Performance – 7.5/10
Overall Rating – 7.6/10