MAXIDENT

The record

MAXIDENT is the mini album Stray Kids released on 7 October 2022, with eight tracks. The title track is ‘Case 143’. It follows ODDINARY of the same March.

The album introduction on Bugs says the title joins max and accident, and means a large event that arrives without warning. The same text describes ‘Case 143’ as the first love song the group has led an album with, likening the confusion of a feeling met for the first time to an incident being reported, and using the code 143 to say I love you. The record carries one song each from three units, and the closing track is the Korean version of the title track from the group’s second Japanese mini album.

Reviews

NME’s Rhian Daly reviewed the record three days after release. She wrote that love had come up here and there in the group’s discography before but never like this, and that “Maxident explores romance deeply for the first time, but doesn’t compromise Stray Kids’ unique musical DNA in the process”. She called the record the work of “a group of true experimenters and artists showing their thrilling progression in real-time”, and closed: “With Maxident, it feels like there’s no limit on what they can do – and certainly no stopping them as they push ever forward.”

Billboard’s Jeff Benjamin ranked the eight tracks six days after release. He wrote that the group refused to re-create what had brought them their breakout success, and that “the eight tracks on Maxident aren’t gushy, catchy love songs, but quirky and unorthodox explorations into all things connection”. He added that the record “is relatable and clever in the way it approaches the subject, incorporating more extensive and universal themes in the tracks related to relationships one has with other people and with one’s self”.

Kwibi of Idology (아이돌로지) opened his entry in the monthly albums column for October 2022 with the line “there is less force, and it is firmer than before”. He wrote that as the tension eased in the bravado the group had carried since before their debut, “the good humour has been doubled over”, and closed: “This is what a group looks like once it is in orbit — at ease, and practised.”

Among the tracks

Of the title track Kwibi wrote that “‘Case 143’ is the first of their promoted songs in five-odd years to take love as its subject”, and that between lyrics that call falling in love an incident, a scale that descends in semitones and a music video that plays with the form of a music video, the song “lets its particular humour out to good effect in a tone brighter and lighter than anything before it”. Daly wrote that where love might often be broached softly, the group “come in with something more brash and disorientating”, and that the song “is built around an ever-changing rush of sounds”, adding up to “an accurate depiction of when someone enters your life and tips it upside down with their mere presence”.

The unit track all three reviews mark is ‘3RACHA’. Kwibi wrote that it stands out for “a relaxed swagger even in the middle of an aggressive drill track”. Benjamin wrote that if the trio were going to name a song after themselves it had to be a defining track, and quoted Changbin’s line, “Our credit is always the biggest headline”. Daly wrote that the three were dipping into drill for the first time and “largely pull it off, matching the fire of the originators of the genre”.

‘Chill’ is written by Han alone. Benjamin called it “his latest self-written masterpiece that contemplates a complicated relationship over production that honors classic R&B sounds”, and wrote that whether a listener has had an awkward romance, grown apart from a friend or felt uncomfortable where they are, the lyrics have a theme anyone can relate to. Kwibi wrote of the same song that it “unwinds a parting calmly, and with relief”. Of ‘Give Me Your TMI’ and ‘Super Board’, Kwibi wrote that they “play with rough electronics”, and Daly wrote that the first “describes the feeling of stuttering through the start of a new relationship”.

Numbers

The Korea Herald reported that the album entered the Billboard 200 at number one, continuing the group’s run of consecutive chart-toppers. The same title reported that as of 29 March 2025 the music video for ‘Case 143’ had passed 200 million views on YouTube, giving the group seven videos at that mark.