Tracer [Sinawi 5th Album], foreshadowing Sinawi's second heyday, released for the first time in history, 2023 remastering limited edition 1LP + 1CD combination board!

In 1986, Sinawi appeared as a band logo embodying golden wings and led the golden age of heavy metal in Korea.
Unfortunately, however, their wings finally broke with their fourth album in 1990.
With intense typography, the word 'Heavy Metal' was drawn on the jacket, and it literally appeared like a comet. Since then, it has led the trend at the forefront of heavy metal in Korea, and produced many members who left a big mark on the music world, but sutured the ongoing internal circumstances. In the ever-changing music scene, it seemed impossible to maintain a band with heavy metal music. Eventually, Sinawi went through the process of disbanding, and leader Shin Dae-chul formed the blues/hard rock band Freedom in 1991 the following year. However, 'Freedom' also disintegrated without any special activities other than one album. And Shin Dae-cheol composed and performed on a regular singer's album, and put his name on the producer's credit, and the band Sinawi was quickly forgotten without having any meaning other than his previous career.

From 1991 to 1994, the albums Shin Dae-chul was involved in ranged from solo albums by Sinawi vocalist Lim Jae-beom to Ji Pyung-kwon, Seo Taiji and Boys, Park Gwang-hyun, Lee Hyun-woo, Jeong Hae-yeon, Angel Ice, Jang Hyun-cheol, etc. did. Then, all of a sudden, he had this idea. “Since we had a lot of sessions, afterward I played and I couldn’t remember if I (played). That’s it. Ah, it seems that this is not my path, so I just didn’t do it from that day on.” (MBC Special July 8, 2011, 'I am a rock legend') Of course, he participated in the albums of Lee So-ra, Lee Seon-hee, and Do Won-gyeong after that, but he only played one or two songs he composed, and he actively participated in the album as before. did not get involved However, another path of Shin Dae-cheol began in a place that he thought was not his path. Together with Son Seong-hoon, who was in charge of producing the album, he was able to pick up Sinawi again.

Son Seong-hun was already doing solo activities before reorganizing Sinawi, and before solo activities, he was active in a band called Warrior. The warriors, composed of Son Seong-hoon (vocals), Kim Joo-young (drums), Jeong Han-jong (bass), and Choi Jin-woo (guitar), were active mainly in live clubs in Korea, but were also known for their activities in Japan when they won a prize in a competition held in Japan. Guitarist Choi Jin-woo is the same person as Jinu, who made 'Wonderful Imagination (Waiting for White X-Mas)' after the dissolution of the warriors. Anyway, after confirming Shin Dae-cheol's will to reunite Sinawi, Son Seong-hun recruited Jung Han-jong and drummer Shin Dong-hyun from Zero-G, who were active downtown with Kim Se-hwang after the warriors disbanded. It was the moment when the name Sinawi reappeared in the music scene 5 years after disbanding.

Before the album was released, Sinawi had an interview with . In this interview, Shin Dae-cheol said, “Personally, I wanted to do free music work and performances that I had never done before, and it is meaningful to provide a variety of music to the public. Our popular music is so trendy that it is always biased to one side. I will express our frivolous times through music with thick lines.” In the same article, Jeong Han-jong said, “Alternative rock was born as a reaction against the existing rock music leaning toward commercialism and losing its original spirit. He explained the nature of Sinawi's 5th album, which will be transformed into a grunge/alternative sound.

Also, if you look at the interview with Shin Dae-cheol with the monthly , “There were things I couldn’t achieve in Sinawi, so I had a lot of regrets and regrets. Rock music in general has changed a lot since the 4th album. Since the early 1990s, there was an alternative rock atmosphere, so there was no choice at the time. He had to accept this to survive the rock scene. Of course, there were risks involved, such as hearing that Sinawi's music had changed.” For him, Sinawi's transformation may not have been the abandonment of heavy metal sound, but the courage to leave behind the splendid past and take a step towards new music.

And the 5th album came out to the world with black and white dark artwork that doesn't even have the album title or the name of the band besides the picture of the demon trampled by the four kings. The sound that puts Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains on the same line and blends them together with the heavy metal sound up to the 4th album, It became the starting point for a new Sinawi that was different from the bluesy hard rock and psychedelic sounds of freedom that had been formed since then. Son Seong-hoon's vocals can be said to be the style of his debut album, Lim Jae-bum's power and rough texture, if you compare it to Sinawi's last album.

Maybe because of that, in the first song 'To My World', there are a few traces of the previous Sinawi, but overall, the band actively accepted the grunge sound. Shin Dae-chul's left arm position was raised, and the guitar tone of classic hard rock was combined throughout, including the active use of the wah pedal. In addition, the obsession with reckless speed competition that had been raised as if competing with guitarists of neighboring bands was finally shaken off. Unlike before, the darkened guitar tone suitably suits the lyrics dealing with serious consideration of issues throughout society.

The representative song of the 5th album, 'A Child Who Was Beaten', is a song about people who are marginalized and abandoned. In an interview, Shin Dae-chul said, “This is a song sung about events that were socially problematic at the time. Personally, I think that's one of the characteristics of rock music. Of course, this is not to say that we are a participatory and social band, but I think we should express these issues as much as we can.”
In addition to 'Broken Child', 'Stairway of Heartbreak' is a song about the desire for success and challenges, and the resulting frustration and failure. appeal to the restoration of humanity. In addition, 'I Must Watch' contains concerns about environmental destruction, and 'To My World' contains personal solitude and worries.

The Doors cover song 'Waiting For The Sun', which was not included on the cassette tape at the time of its release but was included only as a bonus track on the CD, is the story of a sound that mixed Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains mentioned above on the same line. It can be said as an amplification for According to the article at the time, along with Doors' 'Waiting For The Sun', Jimi Hendrix's 'Bold As Love' and Shin Ji-hyun's 'Petal' were also planned to be included in the album, but they were omitted from the album. However, as can be heard in the performance of 'End of Chaos', Jimi Hendrix's influence left a huge mark throughout the album. For reference, Shin Ji-hyun's 'Petal' was included in the 6th album released after the vocalist was replaced by Kim Bada. 'Misfit To Society' is an unusual song with English lyrics among Sinawi's songs.

In a later interview, Shin Dae-chul said, “I have no intention of defining Sinawi’s music in any way. There are some people who take it badly that things have changed from before, but I don't think that's right. As a musician, you always have to show a new and changing side of yourself. I think all of this is Sinawi’s style.” Sinawi's 5th album is an album where his thoughts began to be reflected in music in earnest. The new signature sound that will appear in Sinawi's later albums, such as the appropriate and effective use of the chorus and the guitar riff line with a semitone descent that fits snugly into the ear, is intact.

There's no denying that Sinawi's second heyday was when he was with Bada Kim, but it's noteworthy that this album is the starting point for all the styles he expressed back then. After the album was released, the press reported that grunge music, along with Geenie, who started their activities around the same time, was an important experiment to take root in Korea. While Genie was short-lived with two albums, Sinawi recruited Kim Bada after Son Seong-hun left the group and continued to be more active than ever, leading new changes in domestic rock in the mid- to late 1990s.

Written by Song Myeong-ha (Editor-in-Chief of Paranoid)