[en] Review: Beast – Shadow

Beast has once again exploded onto the Kpop scene with an incredibly catchy comeback song that has not failed to disappoint the large B2uty fan group across the globe. The music video, combined with a beautiful song has re-lifted Kpop from a shaky start at the beginning of 2013 – and a return to what fans love best. Many Kpop lovers have been slightly disappointed with the comebacks of recent artists, such as 2PM and even 2NE1 received poor reviews of their newest music video. However Beast has returned with a song with the same high consistency fans knew from “Fiction”.

The song comes from Beast’s new album “Hard to Love, How to Love” where all the tracks where all songs written and composed by Yong Jun-hyung and Kim Tae-joo. The album includes the song “I’m sorry” and “”Gwaenchanhgessni” which were released as digital singles before. The lyrics to the song are extremely beautiful and the light metaphors work perfectly with theme of shadows and darkness which represent the song. For example the line “Early in the morning, again today, the sun is hiding. The light has disappeared, it took you and went far away.”

The tempo to the chorus is upbeat enough for the group to dance effectively keeping the audience captivated with a complex dance routine and several solo parts for each members. The lines seem to be distributed evenly between the six members, there is a good balance between rap and vocals which Jun-hyung highlights with two impressive rap verses that show his development from debut days.

The music video matches the dark and haunting lyrics to the song really well, and I was very impressed with the amount of detail put into the sharp editing and overall look of the video. The MV seems to tell a story of a girl with a darker side and her “shadow” represents this. The creepy dancer who has skeleton body paint adds to the gothic feel of the video, the skulls, snakes, spiders and scorpions make it seem straight out of a E.A.Poe poem. The mirroring effect is also nicely done and the abandoned buildings and falling snow (ash)where Beast dance give it a desolate and post-apocalyptic feel.

Overall it seems that the song and video have not failed to disappoint and although they have taken a year to return, they comeback with a strong yet meaningful song. Other than the dodgy English where it should say “I’m a shadow” but sounds like “I’m shadow”, there is not too much to be disappointed with and is defiantly in the same league as their other songs “Shock” and “Breath”. For all of you who haven’t seen the video yet, watch it and enjoy!