ARTMS’s new single Burn was originally scheduled for release last week, but promoting a song with that title during South Korea’s wildfire emergency would be quite insensitive so they wisely pushed the release back until today. It’s ARTMS’s first promoted work since last year’s debut album and offers a sleeker, more mainstream sound.
At its best moments, I can almost hear a little Sweetune-style synth in Burn‘s instrumental, but the track as a whole is nowhere near as melodic or consistently engaging as that nostalgic touchstone suggests. The sound is slinky and inviting, offering a slow-burn structure over undulating bass and twinkling electronic elements. However, the melodic range is extremely narrow, often veering toward the kind of sing-talk that mars so many tracks of this style. In this way, Burn feels more like a performance piece than an exciting song in its own right.
Burn‘s chorus — especially the second half — shows potential. It best capitalizes on the production’s sultry atmosphere, but feels almost like an anti-drop style hook. And without exciting verses to counter this subdued energy, Burn lacks peaks and valleys. It’s relentlessly pleasant, but never as smoldering hot as its title suggests.
| Hooks | 7 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.5 |
Grade: C
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Man….it already feels like MODHAUS is giving up on them a bit. That, or they’re just trying to put them on tour as often as they can to milk them for as much money as they possibly can. It’s so weird how they’re already going on tour AGAIN with only this one comeback, and it’s their FIRST comeback so they don’t even have that much music to begin with (disregarding any LOONA songs and/or covers they can do).
And then the quality of the MV is just???? It’s so obvious they just threw something together, and after their AMAZING debut that feels insulting for their first comeback. The song is just alright, so giving it a C makes sense to me.
I’m so tired of every group going on tour so often, especially NEWER groups who only have one or two mini albums (or in ARTMS’s case, they debuted and then immediately went on tour) because it really is effecting the music aspect of it all imo
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the quality of the mv is just like favorite though digipedi have released several mvs in the same style as burn?
as a group they don’t have much music but if you count solo albums and oec its a lot, but I don’t like burn either personally. anyway it was scheduled to release on 2019 i imagine they tweaked very little, this would have fared better in that time.
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actually i had more to say about the mv, since ive seen a lot of people degrade it. it feels pretty contemporary though? the font of the flashing words reminds me of whiplash. sophie’s faceshopping does it too and i’m 100% sure it influenced the likes of aespa and charli xcx in their current output as well. the fire edited on kim lip reminds me of a lot of edits on pinterest made to look like early 2000s quality pictures, it actually reminds me of older indie games too, idkk. also the shot of heejin with cameras is also there in many kpop group mvs especially ive. ive had a lot of the “look at me, i’m glamorous enough to be filmed” in mv like after like. onlyoneof (also famously under jaden jeong) had this “being filmed” aspect in their mv for ‘angel’ too. idk i don’t like the song but i quite like the mv.
i don’t get why it’s being called low quality, budgetless, etc. it feels very on brand for digipedi and jaden jeong, with a fresh perspective to match the current standards
also i hope i’m not the only one who noticed the twin peaks reference (“fire walk with me”, someone on twitter also previously compared the shots of the floating blinding white angel to a scene in the movie) . imo there was thought and effort put into this.
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Whoa what’s with the doomposting all of a sudden? Perhaps the part that you’re missing is that this not in fact “their first comeback”, which has already been recorded and is coming sometime shortly after their tour; it’s merely a digital single that’s meant to accompany the tour itself. A tour incidentally whose setlist consists almost entirely of LOONA songs and as a result is substantially different to the one they did last year.
As for the music video, given that this is a digital single that will receive almost no promotion other than the tour itself it’s completely understandable that they wouldn’t devote a big budget to it; if anything it’d be weird for them to do much more. But I agree with “Bloopers” that there’s nothing low-quality with the result, as Digipedi (if it’s even them) and Jaden Jeong have frequently demonstrated that as long as the artistic vision is there they’re able to do more with less. The clever cuts and camera angles, the cropped frames, the use of typography as a visual element; they all result in an aesthetic (artistic even) outcome that’s more than the sum of its parts.
But anyway, we’re mainly here to discuss the music and not videos and tours and comebacks. Is it groundbreaking stuff? Absolutely not, and I can see how after the tour de force that <Dall> was someone might find it disappointing in comparison. I still like it though, it’s an important piece of history that finally found its way out of the vaults, and I’ll enjoy watching them perform it live along with all the other songs from that era.
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I don’t agree with either of y’alls opinions and that’s fine. I stand by what I said and am not changing my mind. But don’t speak as if you know me. That “what’s with the doomposting all of a sudden?” is very weird.
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Oh that wasn’t directed to you personally. Like you said, I don’t know you and I’ve never seen your posts before (or if I have I don’t remember them). It was more like, I was taken aback that anyone would doompost in response to this song.
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well this is definitely a 2019 loona track in that it’s actually pretty good but it should have been great. it’s always a fun day when an unreleased song escapes out of the vault but maybe it just needed a bit more time in the oven.
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Song is alright, but with all the hype of this being an unreleased Loona track that was teased long in advance, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed with the way it turned out.
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I agree. if it was released in 2019 like it was intended, maybe I would’ve gagged.
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i still love my loona girlies, i’d probably rank it the same except the bias criteria would be 100 because yes
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The various elements clash, and none of them are all that interesting on their own.
5,8,5,8 = 6.5
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Damn I miss Loona
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I like this song. I had no idea this song was originally made in 2019 as a Loona song.
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I’d heard about the recent removal of South Korea’s president after the whole crazy martial law stunt he pulled a few months ago, and how they now have a short stretch of time (60 days I believe) to elect someone new. But I didn’t know there was also a wildfire emergency going on as well. SK just can’t catch a break, huh?
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This felt like late 2010s kpop. Definitely potential in the production but the melodies are hard to catch during the listen. Ill be surprised if this grows on me
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