The return of BTS has been awaited for five long years, in which its seven members – Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V and Jungkook – have completed military service, mandatory in South Korea. A period of time that the members have taken advantage of to publish solo music, but that has also allowed the public to take a break from their prolific discography, and also from the avalanche of record records announced with elaborate hyperbole that star in the charts.
The band is accustomed to the military regime imposed by the K-pop industry and its record label, HYBE, and in their return concert in Seoul – where this weekend they performed in front of 100,000 people and which was broadcast on Netflix – the septet has offered choreographic precision, strident rhythms and an extremely elegant and careful aesthetic futurism, symbolizing an evolution towards a more elevated and adult proposal. Although with buts.
Based on the repertoire of ‘ARIRANG’, their new album, BTS’s performance has been forcibly marred by the injury of RM, considered the leader of the group, who broke an ankle during rehearsals. RM is the first person to speak at the concert, after the seven members appear on stage after being revealed by the corps de ballet, also in war style: “We are back.” However, the epic is diluted by seeing him perform primarily while sitting on a stool.
In the middle of the gigantic stage located in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, with a hyper-futuristic style, like something out of a science fiction movie, the seven members of BTS present the songs of ‘ARIRANG’ and interact with the audience, pronouncing always generic phrases such as “we have missed you” in a somewhat robotic way. It is the other six members who really sustain the performance, thanks to choreographies executed with precision and millimetric synchronization, and competent vocal performances assisted by the usual pre-recorded ones.
But behind the spectacular nature of the stage, the audience and the productions of ‘ARIRANG’ hides the same doubt as always: that emptiness that the songs emanate and that is perceived on stage, through performances that reveal an astonishing technical meticulousness but little of the human side of the artists. An almost spiritual vacancy, evident in the artistic proposal of new songs like ‘Hooligan’, ‘2.0’, ‘FYA’ or the single ‘Swim’, which seem to recreate an idea of musical power, rather than achieving it.
There is also something uncomfortable to see in the interactions of the BTS members among themselves, and that is being captured by the fans themselves, as if, after five years of hiatus, they had returned to BTS feeling somewhat out of place. There is a moment in the concert when each member confesses their favorite song on the album, and even that naturalness feels rehearsed to the extreme. It’s not that we don’t like hyper-fabricated boy bands, but there is a huge void behind all this spectacularity.
