DIMENSION : ANSWER

The record

DIMENSION : ANSWER is the repackage of ENHYPEN’s first album DIMENSION : DILEMMA, released on 10 January 2022. Three songs — ‘Blessed-Cursed’, ‘Polaroid Love’ and ‘Outro : Day 2’ — join the original eight for 11 tracks in all, and the title track is ‘Blessed-Cursed’.

BELIFT LAB’s album introduction on Bugs calls the record the story of seven boys who refuse the answer the world has set and go looking for one of their own. Of the title track, the same text says the boys had taken the conditions given to them and the order that meant to tame them for a blessing, and have now learned that all of it was a curse. The concept photographs are split into two versions: ‘NO’, for the cold look the boys turn on a world that has been pressing them, and ‘YET’, where unease and resolve sit together.

Reviews

Rhian Daly of NME gave the repackage four stars out of five on 10 January 2022, the day it came out. The review notes that DIMENSION : DILEMMA had ended on Jake’s questions — “So, what is it I want? / Is this correct? / What should I do?” — and says that “despite its title, ‘Answer’ doesn’t claim to have any of the solutions, but it does offer some insight on how the band will move forward in their search for them from here on out”. Of the title track the review says it is “another enticing single that mixes crunching, fiery guitar riffs with the thundering thud of hip-hop bass”.

Yemi of Idology (아이돌로지) wrote in the outlet’s monthly column on the albums of January 2022 that “on ‘Blessed-Cursed’ the story is laid over the cliched theme of the spirited boy that male idol groups work with, and that gives the song its dimension”. The song, Yemi wrote, “keeps using Auto-Tune as freely as the earlier records did, and still captures the texture of the members’ voices and their acting”, so that “the message of the song and the direction it is given look at the same point, as if the answer in idol production lay with the members”. The note closes on the balance the record strikes between the ability the group has built up over two years of work and the direction written for it.

Among the tracks

‘Polaroid Love’, one of the three new songs, is the track both writers stopped at. Daly called it “the candy-coloured R&B-tinged pop” that gives “a little breather from the big questions about the biggest topic of all, life”, and read it as a song that finds magic in something as ordinary as a polaroid photograph. Yemi wrote that it “shows the clear, high timbre the group has, and the boyishness that comes with it, without any strain”, and noted that its success, alongside the earlier ‘FEVER’ and TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s ‘Anti-Romantic’, was forming a habit at the label.

Of ‘Outro : Day 2’, which closes the record, Daly wrote that “its stuttering, space-y synths slow the blood-pumping pace like the chaos of day melting into the quiet of night, eking out more space for reflection”. The review points to Jake asking “How must I live tomorrow? Where must I begin?” and answering himself: “Maybe this won’t amount to much, but I won’t let someone else write for me.”

Afterwards

The third mini album MANIFESTO : DAY 1 followed six months later and opened the next series.