Armageddonaespa's first full-length album, out on 27 May 2024 with ten tracks. IZM, NME, Idology, The Singles Jukebox and Billboard wrote about it and about 'Supernova'.
Armageddon is aespa’s first full-length album, released on 27 May 2024 with ten tracks and two title tracks, ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Supernova’. It came three years and six months after the group’s debut.
SM Entertainment’s album introduction says the two songs were set as a double title track and that ‘Supernova’ was released first. The same text describes a second season of the group’s story, widening past the real and digital worlds into a multiverse.
The music video went up on the official SMTOWN channel the same day. The video for ‘Supernova’ had gone up on the same channel earlier, on 13 May 2024.
Lee Seung-won reviewed the record for the Korean music webzine IZM in June 2024. Of the title track he wrote that its overall finish is high and its melodic line clear, so that for all the elaborate construction it moves along with considerable stability — which he called the group’s real achievement, hidden behind the overwhelming visuals and the forceful sound.
The same review found what makes the first half interesting in how the words are laid out. Lee wrote that the lyrics are strung together sound by sound to push the pleasure of listening to an extreme, then repeatedly pared back so the listener is never taxed, and that this is why a structure mixing Korean and English never feels awkward. He summed the record up as an exemplary work that meets most of what one hopes for in a K-pop full-length: a destructive title track, an outstanding killing track and plenty to enjoy.
Rhian Daly reviewed it for the British music magazine NME on the day of release. “‘Armageddon’ begins with a group of supremely confident tracks that more than scratch the itch for the experimental pop aespa do so well,” she wrote. Of the record as a whole, she found that when the group “are allowed to run free in the sounds and sonics they’ve made their trademark, they’re nothing short of exquisite.”
Idology (아이돌로지), the Korean idol-pop webzine, placed the record on ‘결산 2024 : ③올해의 앨범 16선’ on 28 February 2025, a list voted on by eleven of its current and former writers and six guest jurors. Erin, who wrote the entry, said ‘Supernova’ opens on an electronic sound like a revving engine and pulls the tension upward, while ‘Armageddon’ stretches its chorus out to deliver a sensory shock, as though distorting speed. She closed by calling it the album that became the most forceful “event” of 2024, after the line “사건은 다가와” in ‘Supernova’.
Jeff Benjamin took the record’s ten songs in one piece for Billboard on 31 May 2024, ranking them. He wrote that the first full-length explores parallel worlds, giving the four members “infinite possibilities as both otherworldly idols and relatable young women navigating adulthood.”
‘Supernova’ was released two weeks ahead of the record, on 13 May. Kim Tae-hoon reviewed it for IZM in May, calling it a clean and polished single that works as a trailer for a new aespa world, its beat plain but weighty and running naturally along familiar lines. It is, he wrote, the result of gradually removing the excess from the identity the group has built since ‘Black mamba’.
Idology’s Sskwib read the same song through the word rupture in ‘결산 2024 : ②올해의 노래 16선’. ‘Supernova’, he wrote, is a song filled with ruptures throughout — an endlessly writhing bassline, sound panning busily from side to side, a chorus that hammers in off the beat as if to contradict itself, the “사건은 다가와 Ah Oh Ay” part that pushes in whenever you have almost forgotten it and turns the chorus into a supporting role, and an unexpected beat change at the bridge.
The Singles Jukebox, where British and American music writers each file a short note on one single, covered ‘Supernova’ on 6 June 2024. Jonathan Bradley wrote that “it launches with a bass thud suitable for a blockbuster movie title card and follows it with bristling bass swells that only avoid sounding out of control because it doesn’t seem possible that they might have been controlled in the first place.” Katherine St. Asaph wrote that it “adds some playfulness and sonic variation to the long-lost, much-mourned-by-me 2010-11 pop formula” while “without sacrificing any of the electrogoth maximalism, nor any tension or explosion.” Jacob Sujin Kuppermann heard the song go “to something altogether sillier and more glorious the second that ‘Planet Rock’/‘Trans-Europe Express’ break comes in.”
On the same page Iain Mew wrote that “the bass noises revving up like an incomprehensible machine and the group strutting forward with purpose keep everything through to the first post-chorus escalating perfectly.” Taylor Alatorre wrote of “the smile that crept across my face when the bass-heavy rap breakdown got flipped into a ‘Planet Rock’ sample — sometimes life’s simple pleasures really are all you need.”
Of ‘Armageddon’ itself, Idology’s Mano wrote in the same list that it is a completely new dimension of KWANGYA, built up layer by obstinate layer, and that the song is an achievement precisely because the group made the most aespa-like thing yet without borrowing a device such as the fictional universe.
IZM’s Lee Seung-won read the rest of the first half as an expansion. ‘Set the tone’, which lines up the metallic taste of ‘Savage’ smoothly, announces the completion of a new grammar running from ‘Salty & sweet’, he wrote, while ‘Mine’, which connects the dry impression of the digital to minimalism, and ‘Licorice’, which stresses the curve of the analogue with a catchy melody, each charge at the limit of its own method. NME’s Rhian Daly called ‘BAHAMA’ “a breezy and bright summer pop song that details taking a friend on a trip to the titular island.”
Billboard placed ‘Supernova’ on ‘The 25 Best K-Pop Songs of 2024: Staff Picks’ on 7 December 2024. Jeff Benjamin, who wrote the entry, called it a song that “isn’t just the standout single that kicked off aespa’s first studio album Armageddon — it’s the definitive K-pop track of the year.” The same piece reports the song going to number one on Billboard’s South Korea Songs chart, entering the top five of the U.S.-based World Digital Song Sales chart, and spending 25 weeks on the Billboard Global 200. In his 31 May piece the same writer noted that it had debuted at number five on World Digital Song Sales, the group’s highest position since 2021’s ‘Next Level’, and risen to number 19 on the Billboard Global 200 for their first top-20 single.
The American music magazine Paste placed ‘Supernova’ at number nine on ‘The 20 Best K-Pop Songs of 2024’ on 27 December 2024. Kayti Burt, who wrote the list, said that “however you feel about aespa’s hook-driven hyperpop, there’s no denying its cosmic power.”
Idology, in the same year-end round, placed the record on its albums-of-the-year list and both ‘Supernova’ and ‘Armageddon’ on its songs-of-the-year list.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
aespa played Lollapalooza in Chicago for the first time on 2 August 2026, with a set of 14 songs. Two days later the music video for 'Switchblade', a B-side from the second full-length album, was released. Here are the stage and the video together.
