DARK BLOOD

The record

DARK BLOOD is ENHYPEN’s fourth mini album, released on 22 May 2023 with six tracks. The title track is ‘Bite Me’. It opens BLOOD, the fourth series, after BORDER, DIMENSION and MANIFESTO : DAY 1.

BELIFT LAB’s album introduction on Bugs says the BLOOD series takes blood as its medium and asks what happens if two people forget one another. The same text says the record shares the grain of its story with the webtoon and web novel DARK MOON: THE BLOOD ALTAR, with which it has arrogance, a curse, fate and the act of biting in common, and that the album carries the gratitude the group felt on meeting its audience in person for the first time after the pandemic, told through fantasy.

Reviews

Tássia Assis of NME gave the record four stars out of five on 24 May 2023. The review says the mini album “marks a return to the group’s story-driven beginnings, fully embracing their narrative as K-pop’s smoothest vampires”, and that “musically, this might be ENHYPEN’s most cohesive work so far”. It ends: “‘Dark Blood’ is at its best when it draws from the underworld: unafraid to bleed, to beg and to be born anew.”

David Opie of Paste placed the record 13th in ‘The 20 Best K-pop Albums of 2023’, published on 21 December 2023. Opie introduced it as “more sparkly Twilight than gory Blade” and wrote that the first chapter of the BLOOD series “embraces the romantic, gothic sex appeal of an Anne Rice novel in K-pop form”. The result, the entry says, is “a hypnotic, story-driven effort that sinks its teeth in with exactly the kind of addictive refrain that the group’s become best known for”.

Among the tracks

Both writers led with the title track. Opie called ‘Bite Me’ “the glittery centerpiece, a monstrous mix of teen vampire lore and late nineties/early noughties boy-band appeal”, and wrote that it is “far better than that combination has any right to be”. Assis wrote that the song “is laced with the best of early-’00s boyband pop, with an addictive ‘Oh my, oh my God’ hook and a compelling refrain”, and read it as the point at which the vampires, alluded to on earlier releases, are no longer in doubt.

Of the opening track ‘Fate’, the NME review says it “introduces this somber journey with Renaissance-like harp chords and a momentous verve”. It reads ‘Sacrifice (Eat Me Up)’ as a track on which the group give up all power “under an intriguing dark reggae rhythm”, and the dusky ‘Chaconne’ as a descent into madness in which the members see themselves as monsters. Opie put ‘Fate’ and ‘Sacrifice (Eat Me Up)’ together and wrote that they “combine to create ENHYPEN’s most mesmerizing body of work so far”. Assis singled out ‘Bills’ as the most sonically distinct track on the record, one whose lo-fi hip-hop beats let the members’ vocals come through.

Numbers

In the album introduction for ORANGE BLOOD the following November, BELIFT LAB said this record had sold more than 1.32 million copies in its first week and entered the Billboard 200 at number four, staying on that chart for eight consecutive weeks.

Afterwards

ORANGE BLOOD, the second record in the BLOOD series, followed six months later.