SEVENTEENTH HEAVEN review

09 Mar, 2024

SEVENTEENTH HEAVEN (2023)

the 19th part of my svt discography review! as of march 2024, this is their most recent release. I will be reviewing all the JP tracks after this, plus any random one-off songs. i really didnt like this album so if you need positivity dont read this lol

Ranking system:

🍇 - 10.0 BNM one of their most iconic slays
🍉 - fantastic song that made me feel something
🍓 - eating, a few flaws that are either easy to overlook or a bit charming
🍊 - good background music but i wouldn't seek it out
🍌 - it does nothing for me but isn't outright offensive
🍐 - does nothing for me and is offensive
🍈 - so bad that it almost wraps back around to good just bc i was laffing so much

(note: tracklists are not in album order. they are very loosely ranked)

🍐 Headliner
Shit from a butt. I like didn’t want to finish listening to it but I did. The HYBE vocal processing machine has made them sound like a 5-person group rather than a 13-person group. It’s so jarring hearing booseok for a second. This song made me like…sad…but not because I’m their headliner…because I feel like peoples creative potential is being stifled in service of making the most digestible product possible…I know they’re in a hurry because of enlistment and HYBE wants to milk them before that starts but it’s pretty depressing.

🍐 Diamond Days
They’re baiting me…nostalgia-bait!!! This shit is over-produced. Like they’re all super low in the mix compared to the crazy instrumental…like this shit is so insane that I’m not really sure what to say to it? Dk screeching slip into the diamond life and then it goes into that incoherent breakdown…what are you guys doing…also the vocal processing is so crazy that I keep mistaking some of their voices for each other. That doesn’t usually happen to me. I don’t think I could listen to this for pleasure…the breakdown is not pleasant. This is like, maybe I could have it as my alarm?

🍐 God of Music
Corporate…Pride….Month….Like it’s…it SOUNDS like early funky seventeen…but chewed up and spit out by the HYBE machine…it’s…sorta unholy if I’m being real…it’s their dynamite. Oh GOD, it’s their dynamite. Oh fuck. We’re really in it now, huh. And if I’m being real, dynamite had the uncanny backdrop of the early days of lockdown to sort of push it to creepypasta-camp territory. God of Music has…well, the state of the world is probably just as bad, if not worse. Plus scoups literally had to phone this in from the hospital from work-related injuries so that’s sort of poetic isn’t it. This is worse than dynamite to me.

🍌 Back 2 Back
This also opens with extremely abrasive synths…they’re like, trying to split the difference between funky seventeen and anamanaguchi!? Like I don’t get what the vision for the production on this album was cuz it’s completely insane and super distracting. Like seventeen are in the background compared to this facking instrumental. Idk this one is probably(?) the best one so far on the album but the bar is sorta in hell…like what’s with all these crazy instrumental breakdowns I think someone needs to check on woozi. Or bumzu. Or both. Cuz I think they might have discovered some new “snack” to “help” them “produce” if you catch my drift.

🍈 SOS (feat marshmello)
This song is in English and opens with “mello made it right” lol. “White sticker looks so sweet, Don’t stick it on so dangerous” josh what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? The um, prechorus(?) is crazy. And then scoups kinda gets into his butt rock bag and I started laughing irl so that’s awesome. “Sell it and buy it like water, When did we normalize danger?” I don’t know either, woozi……”People keep on dyin’, When the world is killing you yeah” wonu is so real for that. Okay if I’m being real the lyrics of this are so distracting and clunky. Josh COMES THROUGH with like EMPHATIC vocals and goes “We gotta run away, From the dangerous thoughts!!!” Jeonghan saying he's my friend was cute though I guess lol.

🍓 Monster
“where my goblins, where my draculas, this the anthem” okay vern. The instrumental for this one isn’t crazy at least. It’s just…banjo-kazooie haunted mansion level coded. Mingyu eats his part so bad lol. The nananana chorus is a bit much but it’s camp and honestly I’m just so happy the instrumental isn’t crazy that this is already my favorite. It’s kinda stupid how mingyu eats up this concept lol like maybe we should get a spooky mingyu solo for Halloween this year that would be fun. Also this song is short so it doesn’t stress me out too badly.

(I shouldn’t rank this) Yawn
Okay so woozi is insane for having a normally-produced ballad on this album lol. Like talk about jarring…the transition from monster to this…apparently this was written about moonbin’s death so that makes it a bit hard to talk about. Especially when you hear seungkwan sing the chorus. But like, why put such an obviously serious song in the middle of THIS album? It’s kind of…like you can’t have this song between monster and headliner that’s insane of you. Seungkwan later released his own personal tribute song but this was what woozi came up with in time for their album release and it’s nice. It’s sad though to hear seungkwan sing his parts. And it’s sad to have this song about grief in the middle of this album between a song about monsters and a song about how famous seventeen are.