Album Review: ‘Heavy Serenade’ by NMIXX
The K-pop band’s distinctive, unpredictable approach to music is a difficult feat that takes both specific intention and focused talent to master, but they may have done it on their latest record
It’s been easier than ever for the casual listener to reduce K-pop to a mere money-making machine designed to churn out cheap earworm hooks for the sole sake of generating clippable TikTok soundbites. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong either – labels are more interested in cashing in a quick hit than they are in putting out music with actual artistic merit. Too many K-pop releases this year have been exactly that.
Then you have NMIXX, who have spent the better part of their career refusing to give in to trends even when times got tough. Their MIXXPOP approach – genre-fluid, vocally demanding, deliberately unpredictable – has steadily evolved with each release; not without its stumbles, but always with a focused sense of artistic direction.
Blue Valentine was perhaps the first sign that the rest of the world is beginning to catch up – the song’s viral moment last year didn’t arrive by a stroke of luck granted by the algorithm like it does so many others. It arrived more like a belated recognition that NMIXX are starting to master something that’s genuinely difficult: building an identity so unorthodox it shouldn’t work, and yet makes perfect sense when it does. Following a breakthrough is one of the hardest things a K-pop group can do – the spotlight in this industry is as fickle as it is bright, and when it finds you, the pressure to hold it is immeasurable. Yet, Heavy Serenade carries that weight without showing a single crack.
The fragile balance between weight and grace is something the album understands intimately – it’s there in the title itself. Heavy Serenade. A serenade, by definition, is a tender gesture. The word ‘heavy’ implies something that resists tenderness entirely. NMIXX plant their flag squarely in the space between, and Heavy Serenade is what it sounds like.
‘Crescendo’ is where that space first takes shape (I mentioned it in my first issue of Shockstar Digest earlier this week). It opens on a smooth, almost fragile melody before the synths and drums cut through. But it’s the abrupt silences injected into its charged chorus that build tension through absence as much as presence. Each pause makes the sound rush back in like relief and impact at once. As an album opener, ‘Crescendo’ functions as a sort of instruction manual: it teaches the listener to sit within that tension and to wait for the release.
Because when ‘Heavy Serenade’ crashes in, it’s with razor-sharp precision that it fuses trance, acid, drum and bass into a track simultaneously overwhelming and exact. Cinematic percussion as foundation, shifting melodies as scaffolding, before its rock-driven final chorus just tears through it all like something that was always meant to give way. HANRORO’s lyrical contribution doesn’t get lost in the production’s intricately designed enormity – if anything, it brings a sincerity that makes the song’s grandiosity feel deserved.
‘IDESERVEIT’ – perhaps my favourite on the album – shuffles the album’s emotional register without losing momentum. After the title track’s maximalism, its boom bap and Afro-influenced rhythm arrives like a deliberate decompression. It’s chic, rhythmically confident and lyrically reflective in a way that adds necessary texture while still landing smoothly. Like almost every other NMIXX B-side worth its salt, it gets better every time you listen to it.
‘Different Girl’ is structurally less intense with future bass, augmented with trap drums, hazy synths and R&B-esque chord progressions. Celestial imagery colours the lyrics vividly here, which only adds to its dreamy, groovy atmosphere. Bae and Sullyoon’s vocal tones in particular fit this song like a glove. But if ‘Different Girl’ slowed things down even for a moment, ‘Superior’ snaps you back into focus with punchy marching drums and dynamic vocal arrangements. It’s the most straightforwardly exhilarating track on the record, and in the context of Heavy Serenade’s emotional arc, it arrives at the right moment.
Written solely by Lily, ‘LOUD’ strips back the genre maximalism of the preceding tracks in favour of something more radically intimate. A full-throated anthem that refuses to be contained, the album’s closer is a declaration of love so unapologetically boundless it speaks to anyone who has ever been told to make themselves feel smaller. That resonance runs particularly deep for queer listeners: “Forbidden love. [It is] sad that you have this love that’s so big and that you want to tell the whole world, but you can’t because of circumstances,” Lily told Forbes in an interview. “It’s not just NMIXX that would relate to that feeling; there are lots of people in the world. I really hate that it’s a reality for so many people.”
If K-pop is where the art form of disposability thrives the most, it’s an incredibly fresh breath of air to have Heavy Serenade come through like an act of defiance. It asks to be listened to with intention – fully, repeatedly and without distraction. The record offers something increasingly rare in return: music that actually has somewhere to go. NMIXX have always known where they were headed, but this may be the most certain they’ve sounded of it.
Listen to Heavy Serenade on Spotify or Apple Music! |𓏪̣̣𓐇݁𓈒ֺּໃ 𝄞