Lipa, Batangas’s very own Kenaniah has been hitting it big since the past year with viral Spotify hits such as “Bahala Na”, “Hindi Ikaw” and “Better Now”. O/C Records has consistently kept his schedule busy by playing a bunch of large-scale shows in the past year or so, building networks in the circuit of festivals all around the country. The 18-year old artist ticks all the boxes for sharing the same swagger with the big dogs of mainstream pop rock acts that have a suit, a tie, and a guitar. He is what other “Pogi Rock” zoomers aspire to be: a talent that’s planted by the industry. After years of brewing singles, sharing one video teaser after teaser and one record milestone after the other, Kenny looks and feels like he’s ready for the music world, and so he did it by releasing his debut self-titled album under the label; The result of which was turned upside down. The 9-track album is all duds. No variation, no complimentary sonic palette whatsoever. It’s a slog to listen to, not even your favorite performative rock band that got banned from a festival couldn’t reach the level of disappointment this album has. The self-titled album starts off with “Study First”, gated reverb from the drums greets the listener in ear-grating fashion. “Bahala Na” is followed up right away but the smash single doesn’t go hard enough to justify the outdated sound Kenaniah equipped by the time of the songs being written and recorded. Heck, even mentioning all the songs in this album feels like a waste of a single burning phrase if it was commissioned per word. The album and its songs just scream “not ready”. But we all know that Kenaniah took this sound choice a step further, bringing back the sound of 2016 in zombifying effects and beating the production and writing techniques like a dead horse. This demo quality of an album is an insult to a major label that could afford solid mixing and mastering, wherein the album already feels and sounds like it’s a highschool project: it’s raw and unfinished, nothing left to chew or bite on remarkably. This self-titled debut album would rather put a caveat of “fatigue” because of how drawn out the structures are, making the album almost impossible to distinguish if it was dissected in a “music review” format. If this is what the future of Cueshe or Adie dreamed of seeing, then the word “OPM” might be already doomed by the time they first stepped into the scene. Support the art & the artist: