By Michael Luce
W hile Red Velvet isn’t my favorite girl group ever, I do think they might be the best. Their appeal is so universal, and ReVeluv has been one of the best fan groups to interact with online. Additionally, their 2017 album Perfect Velvet is, in my opinion, the best K-pop album released so far. Period. A massive number of awards and recognitions also agree the group is great, so this all might be my most room-temperature K-pop take ever.
Chill Kill is Red Velvet’s first actual album since Perfect Velvet and the following year’s reissue The Perfect Red Velvet. Of course, the group hasn’t been fully stagnant since then, as K-pop is a stream that will quickly wipe you away if you aren’t keeping yourself relevant. Red Velvet have filled the last five years with several “mini-albums" and the ReVe series of EPs. Like I said, I was blown away by Perfect Velvet, so Chill Kill had some pretty big shoes to fill.
Red Velvet, like many K-pop groups, often pulls inspiration from a diverse range of genres, and Chill Kill experiments with trap, a cappella, soul, and 2010s pop. For example, “Will I Ever See You Again?” is only a few claps and some heavy sidechaining away from being a 2015 festival-closing classic. The organ and synths in the chorus are massive, and contrasting heavy-reverb ad-libs with relatively clean unison group vocals make for some wonderful interplay of themes and sounds.
Red Velvet Promo Art
There are some great surprises on this album. I think “One Kiss” would have been a massive track about four years ago, even outside of the K-pop scene. The near-a cappella vocal harmonies in the bridge are incredible, and the chorus is a total earworm. It’s a fantastic pop song, and I find it unfortunate it comes just a few years too late for mass recognition. Another track, “Nightmare” is an incredibly bright and uplifting track about finding comfort in a dark place. Right when it seems like the track is about to be more of the same old same old typical pop, the chorus hits with this absolutely bizarre chord progression that might not be nightmarish, but certainly feels like a dream distorting under the forces of your own subconscious imagination.
My favorite track here is definitely “Bulldozer”. There’s just something about it that demands a stank face and swagger to listen to it properly. The semi-spoken intro snapped me to attention right away, and the rest of the song lived up to the hype set by those first few seconds. I know I’ve been mentioning the vocal harmonies a lot, but the bridge on “Bulldozer” has these delicious pedal tone vocal harmonies unlike what anyone else is doing right now. The song is just absolute fun, and the addictive refrain of “What can I break? What can I break?” will work its way into your subconscious. On top of that, Red Velvet once again show off their album-building prowess as “Bulldozer” was the breath I didn’t know the album needed.
Even the weaker tracks on Chill Kill are well-written and lots of fun, and the tracklisting helps keep the energy moving in the right direction. While I personally didn’t get much from some of these tracks, they were still a good time.
Chill Kill isn’t quite as good as Perfect Velvet, but then again not many albums are. This is still a solid release from Red Velvet and is worth a listen for anyone that liked any of their previous hits like “Peekaboo” or “"Zimzalabim". Red Velvet have once again proven they are one of the top-rated and best respected K-pop groups for a reason.