RIIZE ‘Odyssey’ First Listen: I Ended My Boycott… and Found an Identity Crisis
Added 2025-08-02 10:05:02 +0000 UTCAfter months of holding off, I finally sat down with RIIZE’s debut project ‘Odyssey’ on my channel. In this episode, I unpack the group’s musical choices or lack thereof and explore why their identity feels uncertain. Is this a group still finding their sound, or is something deeper missing?
Comments
Yeahh I hear it and it already sounds like the NCT U song Gas so that didn't help. And probably why they went the high school music route but there are so many other genres and styles they could do that could work!
Koko3op
2025-08-03 14:56:52 +0000 UTCIs it just me, or does every new boy group SM debuts now just feel like an extension of NCT? I get it — technically, the only boy groups they’ve introduced post-NCT have been another NCT unit (WISH) and RIIZE. But even RIIZE is made up of members who were either already part of NCT or in line to be. And because NCT is so massive — both in number and in the sheer range of genres, sub-units, and concepts they've covered — it feels like there’s barely any creative ground left for a new group to stand on without overlapping. When RIIZE dropped Bag Bad Back, If I’d closed my eyes, I would’ve assumed it was NCT 127. And sure, there’s nothing inherently wrong with stylistic similarities, but RIIZE hasn’t been given the space to develop and solidify their own musical identity. Whatever “emotional pop” sound they were going for at debut, it didn’t get time to breathe before being pushed into more familiar SM/NCT territory. And then there’s the Seunghan situation which changed everything. The way it was handled tainted the group’s image for a lot of people. It’s not even about the members who stayed; it’s about how unfair and messy the whole thing felt. That kind of unresolved controversy makes it hard to fully root for the group without constantly feeling like something’s been swept under the rug. At the end of the day, SM might think they’re creating something new, but it’s hard not to see RIIZE, and potentially any future boy group, as just another branch of the NCT tree.
Kpopiana
2025-08-03 14:40:26 +0000 UTCHaha awww thank you Briana!! I appreciate that and yes to everything you said and you're not wrong! SM does tend to do that with their groups at the start. It seems the only group they got right was NCT and Aespa but they're sonically quite similar tbh!
Koko3op
2025-08-03 07:13:09 +0000 UTCSo my thing with SM and their direction with RIIZE (besides the OBVIOUS fumble on losing a talent like Seunghan and really staining the love that og fans had for the group) is that you looke at this STRONG debut with Siren and the predebut videos emphasizing performance and then we get tossed the "emotional pop" description which just threw me for a loop? When they were rumored to be the boy version of NewJeans, I was okay with that. Give me 90's boyband goodness! And its there in some ways but then you get BBB and Fly Up. I do love that we're seeing vocal maturity (hello Eunseok anyone? and the powehouse that Wonbin is turning into) I do think that SM (old and new) tends to have an identity crisis. Look at SHINee and F(X). Now, we know their sound but at the start, their sound wasn't set in stone yet. There was a lot of WTF is SM doing. I do think the weakness with SM is that they tend to pick songs from different creatives and mash them together. There's so many different producers in the album. Get consistent producers and let the boys have more creative input (They literally have Shotaro! He should be choreographing like K does for &Team) so their personalities come through. I enjoyed the album and I can see where the group can go. Personally, my faves were Ember to Solar and Another Life (because I love the drama of these songs) & Show Me Love ( but this may be my inner 1D fan coming out lol) & Midnight Mirage ( would have have loved more but you're right about the vocal editting here wasn't needed ) I gave it 7/10 and I hope SM does this visual album more with them to make it more of a staple. PS. I could listen to you all day long !!!!!
briana skywalker ♡
2025-08-03 02:48:31 +0000 UTC
