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This week also sees the return of MOOBIN & SANHA, one of the two currently active subunits from ASTRO. If you can’t tell by the name of the subunit, the group consist of Moobin and Sanha, and they debuted with in 2020 with Bad Idea. Last year, the pair returned with the title track WHO and their second mini-album REFUGE. Yesterday, the pair dropped their third mini-album, Incense, and the title track Madness.
Madness features a funky and groovy energy to its dance pop profile. But before you assume, the track isn’t necessarily colourful like most funky and groovy songs. Madness also features a serious and a subtle powerful tone to it throughout its run that prevents a colourful or vivid tone to form, which actually allows the sound to fit neatly into the unit’s discography. I found this to be create a decent listen and a definite improvement from their last comeback. Madness features a solid set of vocals from both members, though I wished there was more of a zing to their delivery to make the song a bit more interesting. They were not competing with the instrumental in anyway, but I think a bit of volume (and even some definition) would have worked really well in Moobin and Sanha’s favour to allow them to stand out in Madness. A more interesting melody or delivery some sort would have great as well. There were some moments in which Madness could have built itself on, such as the pop start to the pre-chorus and rapping from Sanha (and briefly from Moobin). But ultimately, Madness joins the long list of songs that lack something memorable. The final aspect of Madness that disappointed me was the repetitiveness. I did like the repetitiveness at first, but with multiple listens, the song is drying up quite quickly. The final chorus doesn’t offer anything new to the song that the first two runs of the chorus had already offered. Overall, Madness is an appreciated step in the right direction for the duo, in my opinion. It just needs more to it.
The song likens the spread of one’s charm to the addictiveness of a scent, resulting in another person to be driven to a point of madness or insanity. And the two charms that we need to be wary of, based on the music video, belongs to both Moonbin and Sanha. In the video, we see them developing scents and breaking into a piece of ice that containing a bouquet of flowers, which might be the ultimate scent they are trying to achieve. I really liked the darkness of the sets, especially the choreography and solo sets we see at the end of the video. I also enjoyed how well timed the video is. When the song launches into the second chorus, we see the pair desperately breaking their way through the block of ice. It plays into the idea of madness slightly, which I thought was clever.
I liked the choreography, but there isn’t much that stands out in a memorable sense. Instead, I appreciated the smoothness that the choreography had, which worked well with certain moments of the song and gave a nice contrast during the song’s more jagged moments (i.e. the chorus).
Song – 7.5/10
Music Video – 8.5/10
Performance – 8/10
Overall Rating – 7.9/10
KPOPREVIEWED 