Track Assessment: ZEROBASEONE – Working To Future

We’re on a gentle march to ZEROBASEONE’s inevitable dissolvement/re-configuration. With their contract prolonged a scant few months, they’ve deliberate a closing live performance and particular album set for launch early subsequent month. Main as much as that undertaking, the group has promised two pre-releases. Working To Future is the primary of those tasters and already appears like a swan tune.

I’ve at all times been of the thoughts {that a} “closing lap” of an artist’s profession ought to be celebratory and thrilling — not dreary and mawkish. That’s simply down to private desire, however the Okay-pop trade is clearly at odds with my pondering. They love a giant, mushy ballad to mark these events. I assume we’ll get extra fascinating music within the coming weeks, however we’re kicking off the group’s closing dash with a mid-tempo heartstring-tugger that may as effectively have been picked from a bin of Okay-pop songs designed for this actual goal.

Buoyed by a nostalgic clip present of behind-the-scenes materials, Working To Future goals to tick off each trope it will possibly handle. Sadly, the tune itself is boring as may be, buying and selling resounding percussive hits for tinny snare and trudging by way of a collection of barely-there melodies which are constrained by their very own lockstep construction. I’m a giant fan of ZEROBASEONE however not at all times of the best way they’re promoted and managed. This tune feels too heavy handed and manipulative, like a treacly strings instrumental that swells up throughout an emotional scene in a drama. I don’t doubt the fellows’ trustworthy emotions about their journey thus far and the highway to return, however Working To Future merely appears like product for the sake of getting product.

Grade: C