Music Evaluate: ZEROBASEONE – Working To Future

We’re on a gradual march to ZEROBASEONE’s inevitable dissolvement/re-configuration. With their contract prolonged a scant few months, they’ve deliberate a ultimate live performance and particular album set for launch early subsequent month. Main as much as that venture, 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} “ultimate lap” of an artist’s profession must be celebratory and thrilling — not dreary and mawkish. That’s simply down to non-public choice, however the Ok-pop business is clearly at odds with my pondering. They love a giant, mushy ballad to mark these events. I assume we’ll get extra attention-grabbing music within the coming weeks, however we’re kicking off the group’s ultimate dash with a mid-tempo heartstring-tugger which may as properly have been picked from a bin of Ok-pop songs designed for this actual function.

Buoyed by a nostalgic clip present of behind-the-scenes materials, Working To Future goals to tick off each trope it might probably handle. Sadly, the tune itself is uninteresting as could be, buying and selling resounding percussive hits for tinny snare and trudging via a collection of barely-there melodies which can be 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 blokes’ trustworthy emotions about their journey up to now and the street to come back, however Working To Future merely appears like product for the sake of getting product.

Grade: C