Club music doesn’t have to be bright, and in his new single “Do You Really Wanna,” Omar Veluz inarguably drops a dancefloor jam that is as dark as a Saturday night can get in 2021. Written for a horror movie but boasting too much originality to stand as a soundtrack piece exclusively, “Do You Really Wanna” explodes from the speakers and rips into the melodic standard in rock with an industrial/noise influence that could have proven unlistenable in the wrong hands. Luckily for us, Veluz is anything but an amateur when it comes to harmonizing with hybridity, and he submits something truly memorable here.
The groove in this track is made more anxious by the smothered white noise in the background, and I think this was important to jack up the tension ahead of the chorus. For Veluz to issue honest catharsis on the other side of the climax, he decides early on in “Do You Really Wanna” that he has to push both the listener and the percussive component behind him as far as any of us can handle without breaking stride with a somewhat mainstream framework. The rhythm, the harmony, and even the hook are steeped in conventionality here – what’s different is the discord they’re being made to inflict upon each other.
Watch the video for “Do You Really Wanna” below
Just from a critical standpoint, “Do You Really Wanna” has become one of my favorite new rock singles this summer, and I think it’s going to do a lot to raise Omar Veluz’s profile beyond the underground. This is a versatile composition and performance that hints at deeper post-punk elements in this artist’s sound than one might initially pick up on just by analyzing the surface-level cosmetics of his latest track. Veluz is an interesting character, and I think the same could probably be said for the personality of his material in general.