BORDER : CARNIVAL

The record

BORDER : CARNIVAL is ENHYPEN’s second mini album, released on 26 April 2021 with six tracks. The title track is ‘Drunk-Dazed’. It is the second record of the BORDER series, after the November 2020 debut BORDER : DAY ONE.

BELIFT LAB’s album introduction on Bugs says the record carries the members’ candid feelings about the world they met for the first time after their debut. That unfamiliar, dazzling world is likened to a carnival, and the feelings are shown in three image concepts, ‘UP’, ‘HYPE’ and ‘DOWN’. The same text says the six tracks form one story, from ‘Intro : The Invitation’, an invitation to a new world, to ‘Outro : The Wormhole’, which points to what comes next.

Reviews

Rhian Daly of NME gave the record four stars out of five on 28 April 2021. Daly read disorientation as “a sonic theme that runs through ‘Border : Carnival’”. The record is “less immediate than its predecessor, its hooks harder to catch onto right away”, the review says, but “the tracks feel like there are more layers to peel back and the reward lies in unravelling the different parts”. The review notes improvements already audible in the members’ vocals and calls the record “another triumph for ENHYPEN”.

IZM’s Jeong Su-min reviewed the album in May 2021 and singled out its construction, naming “storytelling that links the record together organically” as one of its pillars. Jeong wrote that “new attempts such as psychedelic rock and ambient point to room to grow”, and closed: “Having reached a satisfying level of finish, ENHYPEN have laid the team’s foundations steadily with this second EP.”

On 1 December the same year IZM put the record among the ten albums of its unranked ‘2021 Albums of the Year’ in Korean pop. Im Jin-mo, who wrote the entry, put it this way: “It has to be called a victory for the music.” The entry says that between the intro and the outro the record “lines up four singles worth hearing, as befits a group for the general public, and stakes its case properly on the songs”, and named a wide spread of genres as the means.

Idology (아이돌로지) placed ‘Drunk-Dazed’ among its ‘Year-end 2021: ten songs of the year’, chosen by a vote of 12 writers and published on 30 December 2021. The list is unranked and runs in release order. The entry reprints a passage from the site’s April album column, which wrote that, true to the album’s title, “the overwhelming force that comes from energy condensed and then exploding is considerable”. It added that “the synergy with ‘Intro : The Invitation’, steeped in the scent of post-rock and shoegaze, is the highlight”.

Among the tracks

According to the album introduction, the title track ‘Drunk-Dazed’ is a song of rocking sound that carries the flash and energy of a carnival, its mood growing darker as it goes. Bugs credits the lyrics and music to Wonderkid, LIL 27 CLUB, “hitman”bang, Melanie Fontana and Michel ‘Lindgren’ Schulz. IZM’s Jeong wrote that the intro’s chorus and rock sound lead into ‘Drunk-Dazed’, “a psychedelic rock song that creates a hazy feeling”. Daly wrote that the song is produced “in a way that makes you feel like you’re leaning in to hear them as you move from the rumble of a party”.

The third track, ‘FEVER’, is one Jeong marked as a recommended track alongside ‘Drunk-Dazed’ and ‘Not For Sale’, reading it as the song that expresses the group’s vampire concept with a sensual mood. Idology’s Jo Eun-jae put it on ‘Memorable follow-up singles’, a personal list in the site’s year-end 2021 writers’ lists, as “the most precise song for explaining the ‘vampire’ concept that is their world”. The same entry says the song works “like an advanced version of ‘Drunk-Dazed’”, telling in more detail what the title track left unsaid.

Daly heard ‘별안간 (Mixed Up)’ as the group “grappling with the pitfalls of being in the spotlight”, a song that “staggers from part to part, switching which influence is at the fore – hip-hop or rock”. Jeong read its social-media vocabulary and teenage inner conflict as the link between the real members and the characters of the group’s story. Jeong also wrote that the closing ‘Outro : The Wormhole’ points to the next album with a narration quoting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43.

Numbers

Circle Chart counted the record number one on its album chart for week 18 of 2021 (25 April to 1 May). The title track ‘Drunk-Dazed’ was 118th on the digital chart the following week. In the United States the record peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and number one on Billboard’s World Albums, both on the chart dated 29 May 2021. It had entered World Albums at number nine on 8 May.

This is the record that first took ENHYPEN onto the Billboard 200. The Korea Economic Daily reported on 31 August 2026 that since entering the chart with it the group had placed ten albums there in all. eToday reported the Japanese side the next day: starting with this record, ENHYPEN have taken 11 albums to the top of Oricon’s weekly album ranking.

After it

Five months later, in October 2021, came the group’s first full album, DIMENSION : DILEMMA. How THE SIN : BLISS went on, five years later, to a first number one on the Billboard 200 and a number one on Oricon’s weekly album ranking is set out in those stories.