XG HOWLING React: The Wolf Pack Cracks the Perfect City

XG did not make a tasteful wolf metaphor. They put seven women in a controlled city, let the pack instinct break the machinery, and dared the camera to keep up. Good. Subtlety had the night off.

Bottom line

“HOWLING” is XG at their most committed: the beat stomps, the chorus works like a rally signal, and the music video turns pack loyalty into an attack on sameness. The production occasionally piles one dramatic idea on top of another until the track can barely breathe, but I would rather watch XG overbuild a world than watch a safer group rent one purple hallway and call it lore.

First listen: the howl is not decoration

The song opens like a warning moving through a tunnel. Low frequencies do the heavy lifting first, then voices start arriving in layers: clipped rap, half-sung threats, a cleaner melodic lift, and the group response. That structure matters. A wolf howl is useful because one voice announces itself and another answers. XG build the arrangement around that call-and-response idea instead of dropping an animal sound into the chorus like a novelty ringtone.

The bass has the weight of a gate shutting. The percussion does not swing as loosely as “WOKE UP”; it marches. That makes “HOWLING” less playful and more ceremonial, which is exactly why the members’ different vocal textures matter. HARVEY’s nasal bite, MAYA’s attack, CHISA’s control, JURIA’s rounded tone, HINATA’s coolness, JURIN’s command, and COCONA’s low-center confidence keep the chant from becoming one anonymous army voice.

Lyrics and meaning: a pack is a relationship, not a costume

The easy reading is “we are wolves, hear us roar,” and yes, the song enjoys that surface. The stronger reading is about refusing a system that wants every body, ambition, and sound filed into the same approved shape. The pack gives XG a model for solidarity without sameness. Seven members move together because their differences become useful to one another, not because they have been sanded into matching furniture.

That lands differently after the group’s first world tour carried the name “The first HOWL.” The howl belongs to XG and ALPHAZ at once: performer calls, audience answers, and the identity becomes communal. In an interview about AWE, MAYA described the wolf-pack idea as the connection between XG and their fans. That keeps the metaphor from collapsing into expensive ears and claw-shaped nails. The pack is the route through fear.

The production: controlled violence with one crowded hallway

The best production choice is restraint in the verses. XG’s louder concepts sometimes behave as if silence has insulted their family, but “HOWLING” leaves pockets around individual deliveries. Then the pre-chorus widens and the hook arrives with collective force. The contrast sells scale better than another constant wall of distortion would.

My complaint is the final accumulation. Bass, percussion, ad-libs, chant, effects, and visual climax all arrive ready to win employee of the month. The track stops giving the ear a clear front door. That overload matches the concept, but matching the concept is not a magic pardon. One subtraction near the last chorus would make the howl hit harder because the response would have room to travel.

Music video deep dive: the city was never neutral

The video places XG inside a standardized, controlled environment and then lets their presence contaminate it with nature, myth, and pack imagery. Black-and-white order fractures. Fur, teeth, moon shapes, wind, fire, and impossible creatures enter the frame. The city does not simply become “wild”; it becomes capable of difference. That is a much better argument than nature good, technology bad.

The styling commits to wolf language without making seven matching Halloween costumes. Eyes, textures, helmets, ears, leather, and silhouettes carry pieces of the animal rather than copying one mascot suit. The members look related, not duplicated. That distinction is the whole XG sales pitch in one wardrobe department.

The camera sometimes cuts before a composition has paid rent. There are frames dense enough to deserve a pause, yet the edit treats every image like a stepping-stone to the next expensive image. I wanted two more seconds with the controlled city cracking and two fewer “look, another miracle” transitions. Still, the visual grammar is legible: order, intrusion, transformation, pack.

Performance: seven centers are only useful if the formation has grammar

XG’s choreography works because the group knows how to redirect attention. A member can take the vocal foreground while the other six create pressure behind her; then the shape folds and another voice arrives. The movement uses low centers of gravity, sharp directional changes, and collective hits that feel less like synchronized decoration than a pack choosing where to run next.

COCONA and JURIN sell weight. CHISA and JURIA keep the melodic sections from losing physical tension. HINATA’s restraint makes small angles readable. HARVEY attacks odd textures without turning them into comedy. MAYA is the bridge: she can make rap phrasing visible in the body while keeping the line connected to the next member. Nobody needs an identical solo paragraph just because there are seven people. Their value is in the handoff.

The fashion is not proof, but it is part of the argument

Wolf references can go costume-shop stupid very quickly. “HOWLING” avoids that trap by distributing the idea across materials and shapes: fur against hardware, ears suggested by silhouette, eyes appearing where a logo would normally sit, and protective gear redesigned until sport starts looking ritualistic. The styling does not tell us XG are powerful; the performance has to do that. What the clothes contribute is a world where instinct and engineering are already tangled together.

I also appreciate that beauty is allowed to become abrasive. The members are still photographed like stars, but the styling does not spend every frame protecting conventional prettiness. Hair obscures faces. Proportions become strange. Accessories look capable of scratching somebody. A concept about breaking standardized order would be fraudulent if everybody remained safely optimized for a skincare advertisement.

What changed every time I replayed it

• First replay: the actual hook is the response around the howl, not the animal effect itself.
• Second replay: the city imagery makes more sense when read as standardization rather than generic dystopia.
• Third replay: HINATA’s quieter control keeps several crowded shots from becoming visual soup.
• Fourth replay: the last chorus is still too full. I admire the nerve and want one producer to remove a layer.
• Headphones: the verse pockets reveal how carefully the member tones were separated before the group chant closes around them.

RaeRae verdict

“HOWLING” is not my favorite XG song in isolation; “LEFT RIGHT” still moves with less effort, and “WOKE UP” gives the rappers more room to be dangerous. As a title track for AWE, though, it is the correct argument. The group takes the fear-curiosity meaning of awe, gives it teeth, and makes unity sound like something chosen under pressure.

I believe the pack because the members do not disappear inside it. I believe the world because the video shows what it is fighting. I even believe the excess because XG have earned the right to be gloriously unreasonable. The howl lands. The final mix just needs one person brave enough to close a tab.

Sources and receipts

• XG official site — “HOWLING” music video release
• XG official discography — AWE track list and concept
• ELLE — XG on AWE, the howl, and ALPHAZ
• GRAMMY.com — MAYA on “HOWLING” and XG’s wolf-pack concept
• Exact official music videoDaily+10.5KTotal views25.9M

Follow the group through the XG hub, then use the member routes for JURIN, CHISA, HINATA, HARVEY, JURIA, MAYA, and COCONA.