Eight years after debut, ATEEZ return with ‘UP’ and insist they have not peaked

ATEEZ have released GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6, their 15th mini album, and put the message in the title of its lead single. “UP” is, in leader Hongjoong’s words at the comeback press conference, a way of saying the group is “still headed ‘UP’ although it’s been eight years”, and it is the first new music they have released since the biggest commercial run of their career.

That run frames everything here. GOLDEN HOUR : Part.5 and its lead single “Bad” gave ATEEZ their third No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and more than 1.88 million first-week sales, a group record. San described the change plainly: for years the members had to explain on Korean variety shows how well known ATEEZ were abroad, and now, he said, everyone recognizes them. A title track about climbing higher is a bet that a group at its commercial peak can still sell hunger rather than arrival.

Recommended ReadingAfter a Billboard 200 No. 1, ATEEZ open GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6 with ‘Drip’

KQ Entertainment describes “UP” as a song about breaking through the group’s own limits, built on intense brass and explosive bass, the loud, pirate-coded sound Seonghwa said the song brings back into focus. The video carries the same idea in images. Yunho rows a boat while being chased, and the final scene has San breaking through a wall and walking out, which Hongjoong called the clearest symbol of going up. Yeosang takes the dance break before the last chorus, the “killing part” San carried on “Bad”, and he admitted the comparison weighed on him. The official video passed 600,000 YouTube views in its first four hours.

The rest of the record is short. The five tracks run to about 16 minutes: “Anemia”, “Drip”, “UP”, “Faith” and “Hollow Victory”, the B-side Jongho singled out as the one to watch. “Drip”, the pre-release single, has had three weeks to settle, and its video now stands above 32 million views.

That brevity is where the doubts start. With “Drip” already out, Part.6 offers four new songs, made, as Hongjoong put it, on a tight timeline. Seonghwa counted three comebacks this year, and the series itself is showing its age: Wooyoung joked at the press conference that it would be fine to move on to the next part, and Hongjoong conceded that GOLDEN HOUR has “gone on a little long” even as he said he did not want it to end. Six instalments in, the risk is that the frame becomes a release schedule rather than a story.

The members were open about the stakes. Hongjoong said this is the group’s first year after their seven-year contract, a milestone that felt meaningful for eight members, and the group named its goal as beating its own numbers. The first sales week of Part.6 will show whether the audience that bought Part.5 in record volume is still buying at the same pace.

GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6 was released on November 13 at 2 p.m. KST, alongside the “UP” music video on KQ Entertainment’s YouTube channel, three weeks after “Drip” arrived on October 23. The GOLDEN HOUR series began in 2024, and Part.5 came out in June. ATEEZ open their ZERO TO ALL world tour at Inspire Arena in Incheon in January, with legs announced for Japan, Europe, North America and South America.

Tags: K-pop, ateez, GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6, KQ Entertainment

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