The Austin Chronicle : 2K15 Seoulsonic @ SXSW South By Southwest

03.20 FRIDAY SHOWCASES
Korea Night 2: Seoulsonic
8PM The Majestic

Seoulsonic is different from the previous night's K-pop Night Out, in the sense that it focuses on the less bubbly and less commercially viable corners of the Korean music industry. Headlining is YB, a legit Korean rock band that writes songs that could easily co-headline a distant Warped Tour circa 2005. They sing in English, so you don't have any excuses. Victim Mentality are a bedazzled, leopard-print glam-metal act, which is about as ridiculous as you'd expect. The language barrier means we probably won't even know how seriously they take themselves. Big Phony makes stripped-down, empty-space folk à la Iron & Wine and Elliott Smith, which is the exact opposite of Heo's dreamy, chill-out synth-pop. Other acts include the Solutions, who deeply idealize the bygone alternative nation and Britpop revolution right down to the skinny ties, and From the Airport, who wear sunglasses and make heavy beats. Remember that outside the K-pop corporate sugar, which we all love, South Korea remains a place with musicians trying to make their way far away from the machine. SXSW exists for us to acknowledge that. – Luke Winkie

03.21 DAILY SXSW
SXSW Live Shot : Victim Mentality

Korea Night II : The Revenge of Glam Metal

The Austin Chronicle [Photo By John Anderson]We can thank South Korea for many things: bimbibap, director Park Chan-wook, Psy, and the 38th parallel among them. Now let us raise a glass of soju and toast our good fortune at discovering Seoul-based Victim Mentality. Friday brought the second half of SXSW’s Korea night, but it might as well have been 1990 at the Starwood on the Sunset Strip.

Glam metal dead? Not on your life. It’s simply changed hemispheres and now thrives on kimchi instead of the more traditional fare of blow, booze, and babes.

Playing to an overpacked crowd, the band looked the part – of Warrant’s best buddies – with hair extensions nearly to the floor and enough technicolor spandex to impress even Richard Simmons. Then guitarist Kyungho Sohn hit the first monster power chord of Korean smash “Don’t Spit on Me” and all of hair metal’s sins were forgiven in a high decibel blast of pure pop metal froth.

Frontman Krocodile lunged to the front of the stage and let loose a yowl, a come-hither glint in his eye, and more strutty swagger than Cinderella’s Tom Keifer and Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach combined. The crowd roared its approval and Victim Mentality roared right back at them.

Drummer Tarantula kept up a mid-tempo beat, occasionally kicking it up a notch, and Sohn’s fretwork can’t be faulted. Six songs in, the band closed with kickass chorus shouter “I’m Not Your Friend,” which may or may have a ring of truth to it. Certainly the long lines of autograph hounds fervently prayed that wasn’t really the case.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/music

2K15 SXSW Seoulsonic Showcase (Planning/Production/Promotions) : DFSB Kollective x Mandoo Entertainment
International Agent : DFSB Kollective (From The Airport / Heo / Big Phony)
International Digital Distribution : DFSB Kollective (From The Airport / Heo / Big Phony / YB)