There's a ton of 'Bad Boy' type media flooding the forum, as has been the trend for the past few years, but we rarely get a mention of the more mainstream consequences and circumstances of actually being a bad boy, and not only do we get that comment, it's delivered with a two-fold double-meaning: not only are the boys of Bastarz getting a Zero for Conduct in terms of a typical school or work setting, they're declaring that they're so expert at being bad that THEY have become the ones giving out marks for conduct. Additionally, the comment of Zero for Conduct takes the idea of being bad and spins it to being the colloquial bad, as in awesome on stage, a thing which is easy for observers to admit is something that this trio is particularly awesome at. So you've got being Bad as 3 separate ideas in this: there's the general bad an aesthetic in the real world, being bad as a colloquial slang term for bad-ass and awesome as referenced in the Lyrics, and being bad as in a literal criminal as depicted by the visuals in the MV. And even the unit's name, Bastarz, portmanteau blend of 'bastards' and 'stars'... absolutely perfect.
           The three chosen for the group are perfect, B-Bombs smooth vocals sit beautifully in a rough and rowdy instrumental backdrop particularly when paired up with PO's gravelly raps. U-Kwon's voices sits perfectly in between the two and the uniquely bright and slim quality makes it perfect for the vamps. I was surprised / briefly confused / delighted to hear Zico's voice, but with his role taking point on production, and the energetic warmth curled up under his voice blends so well with the official trio's vocals that I can't say I'm really surprised after thinking about it. Hearing him was starling at first, but it does make a lot of sense for his vocals to be there. The stage version sounds awesome without him, but on the recording, having Zico's rougher high-line sit in the recording's sweet spot where they blend into the instrumental is too good to pass up for how it throws PO's vocals into sharp relief. Zico's production job is spot on, fully displaying the epic talents he has to call on (which is why I was so disappointed in most of the solo-work he's released this year, it just was NOT up to par). The track is fantastically well spatialized, leading to an energetic bounce of elements rather more like the crowd in a club than the over-crowding of a busy subway station; each element has it's own space to breath, both in terms of the frequency isolation in the mix and in terms of where the elements sit in the 3-dimensional space of the headphones. All the transitions are smooth and slick which gives the rough overtones that much more drama.
            Visually, the MV is a treat. The styling is gorgeous and the set aesthetics are fantastic, blending a dark, dank underworld with the neon bright intrigue of the club scene. Each member is given a unique character to play in a beautifully stylized depiction of a drug running ring, with lots of visual throws to the Chinese Triads / Yakuza (or at least the iconic tropes of their pop cultural portrayals). B-Bomb is the Client, the bad-boy rockstar that puts the sexy and druggy bits into the classic trope of sex, drugs, rock & roll. PO is the Distributor, the one of the gang's throne calling all the shots with a hand in both the marketplace and the manufacturing process, while staying distanced from and neatly between both parties. He has the most variety in costume because as the ganglord, he has a lot of hats to wear, being able to blend in with normal society, the druggies, and the drug-makers, and such. And then U-Kwon is the Manufacturer. Overtly, he runs an industrial meat-packing plant, the kind with massive freezers that lead to an abundance of antifreeze and the sort of chemical-waste oversight that excuses massive amounts of toxic waste that no one looks too carefully at... both things necessary for the production of crystal meth. The girls in his employ work the meat-packing factory as a front, keeping things above board in one business while they systematically produce drugs and launder drug-money under the ruse of pricey, artisanal-butcher-cut, slabs of meat. The 'snow' scenes could be depictions of cocaine (and the attire of the employees suits the stylized pop-cultural depiction of a meth-lab fairly well), but the main reason to base a drug lab in a freezer-heavy industry is access to anti-freeze, which is not necessary to cocaine production so my money's on meth (the shot of burning crystalline bits around :53, could be crack cocaine, but it still seems more like meth to me). Over all the MV provides as beautifully stylized and sterilized depiction of the drug-world, glamorized just enough to make it alluring without making the illegality of it too obvious or too easy/appealing-to-imitate. It strikes just the right balance, with a flair of obvious fictionalization, to be awesome.

        Zico is an epic rapper, a fantastic musician, a great leader, and a brilliant musical mind... this release might stand as the exception that proves the rule though. I mean the song's okay, it's a bit jarring in the transitions, but it's a well put together peace, over all. At least it is if you're not looking at the video while you listen. Unless Zico was going for a jarring discord where all the timings are almost a full second late or early (which throws off the brain's expectations for sound) this video isn't right for the song. Honestly... even if he WAS going for an artsy, out-of-sync style of hipster drag, this video is just... not good (ironic, considering the title, & the humor is not lost on me).
        It's just concert footage (recordings of songs with much higher bpm ratings than Well Done because they are way outta sync) and an overabundance of a layering of film-effects and irrelevant analog-film images. I could make that kind of a video on my home computer in a few hours, and at the very least, I'd be able to make the timings sync up. If I had half the awesome equipment available to these guys, hell, even if I just had half the source footage... I could do so much better. Admittedly, I want to become an MV professional, so I'm not just an average joe at making MVs or anything, but still, professionals should do better. This is disappointing and it's really just not up to par.
       The song, without the video is still pretty good, and I love Zico, so I'm still giving it more credit than I really feel like it deserves, but I can't in good conscious say much  that's positive about this video.

(This is one of the last late reviews still in my queue, so more relevant and timely reviews are on the menu for the upcoming week!)

I've been undecided on this one since it came out. There's a point at which absurdism moves a concept too far out of touch with reality for my tastes. This is toeing that line. Block B is regaled for their crazy antics, and certainly I'd never want them to rein it in for the sake of social acceptability, but this feels more like they're purposefully pushing their own limits to excite a shock factor, and that's just not my style. Still, the MV is well pulled off, all the colors and shifting visuals are well coordinated and easily excusable due to the circus setting. The tie back to the clowns of the bank robbery in Very Good which lends the release a fantastic sense of continuity to the series of releases.

The song is okay. It matches the visual very well, pairing up thematically with the creepy circus image. It's an impressive show of their abilities, it evolves and is structurally balanced, but I can't quite accept the extent to which the sections feel dichotic... they're just so unrelated that they don't slide smoothely enough for me to enjoy listening to it casually. Unless I'm really listening to the transitions, they sound messy and too-abrupt. When I do sit down with it, the transitions are pulled off quite cleverly, but it's just not quite smoothe enough for it to tall into easy-listening. Having it on in the background is too distracting, but it's not quite enjoyable enough to make me want to set aside time to give it a solid listen. It's a delightful treat that comes up in my playlist when I'm going somewhere, walking down campus or around town or something else rather inane, because it makes the action less boring without distracting me form real work, but it's not really one I think of when looking for a fun song to play. It has pizzazz and a spark of uniqueness, but it's not my flavor.

        That Block B has made a comeback at all is spectacular (as explained HERE), but what they've come back with isn't something that needs to be bolstered by any extenuating circumstances to be considered awesome. It's a radical sound for Kpop, certainly, and it's opened new doors for the industry.
        Very Good has been facing criticisms of not being 'Korean' enough due to this brand-new-sound idea, but honestly, there are some very Kpop roots to this sort of song. A lot of (SS501) Kim HyunJoong's solo work from 2011 has similar instrumentation elements, in particular Do You Like That and Lucky Guy. (TVXQ) Kim JaeJoong's also done a few rock-style releases; so the sound really isn't entirely new. Nor is Very Good the first of this sound to be to be successful. Rather than not sounding very Korean, mostly I think it doesn't sound like past Korean music. It still very distinctly Korean, with a very unique song structure that fits Korean construction patterns (mainly in how the rap lines and melodic lines are woven together). The structure here looks like a washboard zig-zag that's set up in something like an M with a little tail, there's two main drops (in the MV @ ~2:00, & after the bridge @ 3:20), and each verse (singing) & subverse (rap & melodic rap) sections have their own tension levels, and internal tension transition. All the rises and falls of tension add to the melodic fluidity and the balance of the parts, both between people and between elements, means that the listener's attention is continually engaged and the song feels much shorter than it is. One of the best compliments to a musical composition anyone can give is that it was too short, at least that the listener wanted more & therefore is forced to immediately hit repeat (there is a limit to this however, obviously, if the song isn't a complete work, if it's so short it feels unfinished, and someone calls that out, it's not really a compliment). I'm not a huge fan of Kyung's high note there, though, I'm really hoping that the waiver in it is just the filter they put on it rather than vocal strain, because that cannot be good for his voice. I'm all for hitting the impressive notes and all, but I'd rather not have him get hurt for it.
        The video part of this music video clearly has ties to the Dark Knight. I was glad to see that they didn't just follow that line however, there were some nice twists in it. And I love Zico in some of the scenes (the blue-hair ones in particular), he has managed to condense the entirety of Big Bang's Fantastic Baby into a single fantastically ridiculous outfit. Aside from that section, my next favorite part starts at 2:20; the mask of epicness, the dog and the running away, U-Kwon's face is just priceless and the whole thing is hilarious. Other than that, I wasn't too keen on the MV really. It's visually spectacular and certainly funny, but I just wasn't drawn into it as much as I've been for past Block B releases.

            First of all, I just have to say that this is already a fantastic comeback, regardless of anything. By nature of coming back at all, Block B have done something that has been more or less unheard of in all of Kpop history. Disputes with companies are pretty much par for the kpop course these days, but none quite so ridiculous as this one.  For a quick look at the whole situation for those unfamiliar with it, click here. Basically, Block B was being screwed over, an they fought back. They did it properly, mind you, in private and without throwing hissy fits that worried and confused the fans. They just disappeared for a little while. I could discuss JYJ, but I prefer not to jump into a string of cursing longer than my average editorial in the midst of an MV review.
        That I am aware of they are the first band to have successfully fought their company and made a even a moderately successful comeback as a single group (Shinhwa doesn't count here, their contracts ran out with SM, they didn't get them nullified by a court). And also, let's not forget the fact that this whole controversy has been stirred up, blown wildly out of the realm of the typically expected lawsuit scandal, and then more or less settled . . . in about a year. ONE YEAR. That is UNHEARD of. I was not expecting to hear anything from these boys until at least 2015, but no. Here they are, and just as epic as ever.
        Be the Light is their pre-release single and it's fantastic.
        Song-wise it has the intricate rhythmic and melodic elements that are a token part of Block B sound, but it also has some new things worth noting, like some seriously intense harmonies and a significantly slower bpm. It's distinctly not a ballad, but it exhibits a lot of the properties of Block B's past attempts to bridge into the pseudo-ballad genre: Did You or Didn't You had a few interesting harmonic moments, but not like the sweeping harmonic fill of Be the Light, and even earlier, U Hoo Hoo hinted at their ability. From BLOCKBUSTER, Movie's Over dug into melodic movement inside a harmonic fill, and 11:30 explores energy retention at lower bpms, so Be the Light hasn't popped out of nowhere, but it's a hundred times more sophisticated than any of the roots it comes from. The song's form is straightforward and allows for easy evolution. The Bridge slides in with a beautiful thematic subtlety; a held breath, a quiet sigh, silence, a deep breath, and then it's back to work. The raps are layered in with Block B's traditional mastery. Honestly, the elegance here, with which melody moves to rap and back, and how sometimes the rap IS melodic is just beyond words. And I love that Zico has singing lines, and that U-Kwon has a significant part too.
        As for the MV itself, my hat goes off to these boys. As many BBCs have rightly noticed, it's directed to us. It's also about us. The girl's a metaphoric incarnation of BBC, which is why she gets hurt when U-Kwon, standing in for all of our boys, gets hit; Block B knows that it hurts us when they get beat down on by the industry, by their company, by haters in general. And they also know that we'll be here for them forever. This MV is them saying that they are very much aware of that, and that they appreciate it more than they can ever articulate in words, her presence at the scene of the beatdown is likely a comment on the idea that even when we can't physically be there to support them, we're always with them and they know this. Even the end bit, where the members come in, they pick U-Kwon up and help him carry on. When he gets in the van at the end, it's symbolic of Block B getting back into the Kpop Industry's crazy game. The fact that in several shots the girl has some sort of Army helicopter in the background seems to hint at the idea that we're going to help them go to war with the world, which would be true in a heart beat if they ever asked us for it (or even if they don't ask but need us to anyway). The allusions to the Joker and Batman hint that Block B is fully aware of the fact that they are a controversial group, but that they think it's high time someone caused a little mayhem to mix things up and really get the party started. We'll see how it all works out in Very Good (which by my watch has less than two hours left before its release), and on their Mini-album as a whole, and then in an even wider net, the collective international music industry. Gears are shifting and things are starting to change.
        Honestly, the only reason that this one doesn't score a 10 is that the allusions are pretty time-specific, and the messages inside the MV are really targeted at BBCs. In a hundred years, the MV will still be poignant, but it won't have nearly the power it does today, when the sheer weight of the controversies they're facing are still looming directly over us all. Still, this release is fantastic an utterly game-changing for the industry (in a way that's different from how Bangtan Boys' latest MV has shifted things sideways). The fall season seems to be turning out pretty fabulously for Kpop and it's only just begun!