[Review] B.A.P - Warrior

Vocals: 5 / 10

The vocal showing was rather lackluster to unimpressive. The chorus was good since the parts were low and such but everything else was, for a lack of a more interesting word, bad. All the other lines resulted in strained vocals, members reaching for their notes which really turned me off from the song. The bridge leading to the finale was the most obvious example of this with the stretched high note. If you’re going to debut a group which isn’t known for their vocal talent (which isn’t even the case with B.A.P with Daehyun and Youngjae), it’d be wise to release songs which don’t have too much vocal strain.

Appearance: 7 / 10

So I know I have said before that I appreciate singularity or a state of togetherness witihn a group. It irks me when a group has one or two members who have a different hair colour which makes them stand out randomly. However, when every member has the same hair colour and hairstyle, I think it tends to get a little confusing. Especially when this is a group’s debut and nobody (except for the insane creeper fans who have inside sources) knows who they are yet, it becomes extremely difficult to determine who is who. When this song was first released, I saw pages upon pages of comments like “Who is when?” to “I like the blonde one” simply because it was just so goddamn difficult differentiating between each member. I suppose the slight variation in colour of their jackets and pants could help if you were paying that much attention for the 0.5 seconds they were on screen. I feel the blonde took away from the punk aggro style they were going for but I guess the cut and outfits helped everything be okay.

Dance: 10 / 10

This choreography is aggressive, flashy, and downright awesome. The dance 100% matches the style of the song, and while there are other songs with solid dances to compliment them, this one is by far one of the best performances I’ve seen. Choreographies lately have been more focused on catchy moves for fans / others to imitate, dances like this really power B.A.P to being a standout group in terms of dancing skill. The choreography of “Warrior” is a perfect blend of synchronized movements and unique / individual parts (like the fantastic puppet master bits), which is quite literally amazing considering the trend is typically one or the other. The dance break (or at least parts of the break) was by far the most impressive of the choreography. Really impressive work by B.A.P.

Rap: 10 / 10

Whoo does this pair of rappers put others to shame, and they are rookies, no less! Yongguk and Zelo deliver a powerful performance to match the song. Never having followed the releases of either rapper beforehand, I didn’t really know what to expect from these two (or in a sense I did in that I assumed neither would be impressive since there aren’t many good rappers out there) but they shut me up (or at least Yongguk did) right away. Yongguk easily reminds everyone of Korea’s resident badass rapper in T.O.P but with an even lower voice(?) and not quite as good looking (huehue). Zelo’s young but he’s definitely got the skill as his bursts of lines shocked me the most. While both rappers’ parts were aggressive and matching in beat, Yongguk’s rap was more powerful while Zelo’s more quick. I’m excited to see what future work for these two will bring.

Music Video: 8 / 10

This music video is not much different than the standard, but there are differences worth noting. For one, the deadmau5 appearance is strange but neat at the same time, mainly because not many groups have a logo and I think it’s good enough. Of course the aggressiveness of the video and various images / effects added flavour to the video. Camerawork (which I don’t really touch upon) was really good, too. I suppose since nothing else could have come from this theme the execution for the music video was close to perfect.

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Overall: 80 / 100

This was an extremely impressive debut for a group amongst the sea of newbies, showing off rappers and choreography which blew many away. Like others, if I hadn’t known any better I would have never guessed this was a debut. I have yet to follow up on any of B.A.P’s other releases (because there are so many!) but if they are more or less the same style and flavour of “Warrior”, I can come to enjoy them.