KUGUTSU

Positioned as one of PHOENIX's early boss songs, "KUGUTSU" first surfaced in a teaser before its authorship was confirmed at a competitive event, where it was revealed that onoken was behind it. That news caught the community off guard: onoken is associated with artcore and new age, so a pure 220 BPM hardcore track sounded like nothing in his prior catalog. The composer himself recalled starting the piece around 180 BPM and gradually pushing it all the way to 220. Many listeners likened it to the sound of Camellia (かめりあ) or NAOKI, a connection rooted in his earlier days as a BMS author influenced by the PARANOiA series. The official audio circulates under the subtitle "Chaos Mastering Ver," and the BGA was handled by marierie.

It arrived in PHOENIX with Single S18/S20/S23/S25 and Double D21/D23/D25/D27. The S25 serves as the level's final boss: an opening packed with gimmicks that demands memorization, followed by very long 220 BPM runs studded with double-step (2+1) notes that push the felt density sky-high. It closes on a 24th-note back-and-forth staircase so fast it forces siderun/bracket play; even an elite player like Zafrada has had to fall back on that workaround, sparking debate over whether the pattern is even cleanly hittable. The D27 is essentially the S25 spread out, with one-beat stop gimmicks that throw off your sense of timing.

Much of the discussion around "KUGUTSU" centers on its gimmicks. PHOENIX had publicly pledged to dial back these tricks and even stripped them from many legacy charts, so debuting a boss song that leans heavily on stops that scramble your reading struck part of the player base as inconsistent. The same criticism resurfaced shortly afterward with R.I.P. On a lighter note, the title earned a running joke in the Korean community: read aloud in English it sounds close to a local noodle dish, so many players nicknamed it accordingly.