Monster - The 1st Mini Album - EP

ReVeLuv—aka Red Velvet’s devoted fanbase—is plenty attuned to RV's sugary hits and layered ballads. But what’s really lurking beneath the girl group’s candy-coated exterior? Red Velvet’s Irene and Seulgi (aka the “fantastic” subunit) offer a tantalizing look inside the “Psycho” vocalists’ psyches. Their heightened vocal interplay matches the EP’s ratcheted intensity; they examine the downside of unrequited love on “Jelly” and flip the emotional and condimental definitions for added effect. “Monster”—a tremendous single about dual identities that bumps with dubstep drops—reflects their question-everything mindset, searching for what’s real and what’s a front. Ditto the in-the-rough metaphor of “Diamond,” and “Feel Good” with its tears-of-a-clown equivalency. On Monster, not everything you see is real, save Seulrene’s tightly extracted emotions outside of the Red Velvet rope.