Kpopalypse Nugu Alert Episode 8: Icycider, K-Trance, APLUS

Yes that's right it's back again, the k-pop video series that you love to hate to love:

Kpopalypse is going back into nuguland to check out some more nugus!

This episode's theme is drugs.  Everyone I speak to says that drugs aren't really much of a thing in the k-pop business, but I'm calling bullshit on that.  If you ask me Bumkey's arrest is just the tip of the iceberg and there's a wealth of dealing, using and abusing going on underneath k-pop's squeaky-clean surface.  I've discussed why I believe this in previous posts, but what I haven't done yet is throw down on any likely culprits.  We all known about Bom's unusual diet and Daniel's business on the side, but what about the ones who haven't been caught yet?  If there really is a wealth of drugs being traded in the k-pop scene, doesn't that mean that nugus would also frequently encounter drug use?  With this question in mind, I scoured my nugu vaults and came up with three videos that I believe show extreme drug influence.

A quick disclaimer before we begin:

Okay, now that's sorted, let's get on with the business of showing you some completely fucking drugged-out nugu k-pop music videos.

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Icycider - Jjangga (Chan Song)

Icycider have quite a few music videos (the one above is just the most popular one I could locate) and they're all pretty much the same, i.e completely FUBAR.  The songs in most of them are delivered by a cartoon character, in this case the singer is a guy with blue skin (a known drug side-effect), a penis on his head that gets erect, who is also crying and seems to have trouble with mobility and keeping his balance.  The song's also rather good, which of course makes drug use even more likely, as any rocker worth their weight in E strings cites drugs as a songwriting influence.  Just to hammer the point home, there's a tambourine that looks suspiciously like an opium poppy with eyes when it's zoomed up on at 0:28.  Even if I'm wrong about the opium poppy and that's not a deliberate drug reference, did it ever occur to you during school band practice to draw eyes on a fucking tambourine?  Of course it fucking didn't, and that's because you're not anywhere near as drug-fucked as these guys probably are.  

YouTube views at time of writing: 18142  
Notable attribute: even in a cartoon drawing Korean groups still mostly can't get their placement of the Shure Super 55 right  
Nugu Alert rating: average

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K-Trance - Hey Hey

Hey hey this song is honestly decent, and hey hey these people are probably taking a lot of fucking drugs.  The video has a clearly identifiable Primal Scream/My Bloody Valentine look to it and those are two groups which pretty much made getting fucked up their manifesto, so I think it's a pretty safe bet that the "trance" part of "K-Trance" isn't just a musical reference.  All that annoying fucking around with the video colours and saturation levels is a "early 90s English LSD casualty group" signature and only the most drug-shitting comatose-on-the-floor artists back then actually thought that fucking nonsense was a good visual choice.  Then there's the music which is distorted and bass-heavy yet dreamy, melodic and spacious, the perfect accompaniment to curling up in a foetal position on the floor of a nightclub toilet sweating and drooling after a bad combination of ecstasy and methamphetamine cut with too much baking soda.  Of course I wouldn't know anything about that kind of thing firsthand but something tells me that K-Trance might, hey hey.  

YouTube views at time of writing: 8643  
Notable attribute: female singer might actually be cute but the colours are so fucked nobody can tell
Nugu Alert rating: high

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APLUS - Again & Again

On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that anybody in APLUS imbibe in any kind of illicit substances, they all seem like squeaky clean mature girls who got their inner dope-smoking crystal-meth-sniffing wild-child out of their system fifteen years ago.  The people behind the scenes who created this monstrosity, on the other hand, are all clearly ripped off their tits.  Things start off badly with tons of annoying strobing and blurriness for no particular reason, which then continues on and off all throughout the video as if the viewer is experiencing some sort of obscured vision from drug-related heat exhaustion and is about to pass out.  Then there's the tacky appearance of the group name on the brick wall with CGI at 1:24 and the "glowing teeth smile" at 0:56 which gets both the placement and the timing of the "tooth gleam" completely wrong.  Best of all are the lame baby-slaps that the guy gets at the end of the video for dating multiple girls - I can just pictured the completely stoned director saying to the girls "don't hit him too hard, man... you'll kill the vibe".  The guy is even visibly trying to hold back a smile through some of it.  Someone was obviously high as a kite and just didn't give a fuck on the day they had to shoot and edit this one down.  No great loss here because the song is pretty poor in this case but I've got to feel sorry for the APLUS ladies who seem to be the victims of criminal video-editing negligence.  

YouTube views at time of writing: 791  
Notable attribute: I'm still not sure if the three girls in the actual video are the same as the three girls in the intro photographs, or their mothers
Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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That's it for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Kpopalypse will return soon with a very special EXTREME EDITION of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Until then, don't do drugs, kids!