GOLDEN HOUR : Part.4

The record

GOLDEN HOUR : Part.4 is the thirteenth mini album ATEEZ released, on 6 February 2026, with five tracks. The title track is ‘Adrenaline’, and the record is the fourth in the series that runs on from GOLDEN HOUR : Part.3. Kookmin Ilbo reported that it is the first record the group made after all eight members renewed with KQ Entertainment.

The album introduction carried by Bugs describes this chapter as a story about “holding on to conviction and going forward even in the middle of the storm”, where the group “gathers its scattered heart and starts again on the journey of drawing the dream that was shaken”. The same text runs through the five tracks in order, calling the opener ‘Ghost’ “trap R&B in a mood that spreads mysterious and dark”, the title track a track carrying “a fierce EDM sound”, and ‘NASA’ “a hip-hop track”.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지), the K-pop webzine, carried notes from two of its writers on this record in ‘Weekly : 2026년 2월 1주차’, dated 8 February 2026. Cho Eun-jae wrote that “it feels closer to the early work than to the recent work, and in that you can feel the traces of thinking about where ATEEZ’s identity is”, and went on: “it looks as though it is following the trends the current generation of K-pop fandom asks for, and yet it always attaches the tag ‘ATEEZ’”. Mano, on the same page, wrote that “the music follows the newest tendencies thoroughly, but at the core the traces are plain of care taken to transplant the team’s own spirit of the age”.

Mano took the record up again at greater length in the same outlet’s ‘Monthly : 2026년 2월’ of 13 March 2026, quoting his own note as he went. He reads the group as having “finally begun to recognise exactly what the core is that they have to keep”, and finds his ground for that in the title track: “you can see it in ‘Adrenaline’ alone, because it wears the outer skin of the most contemporary music it ever has while at the same time holding the core that is most ATEEZ.”

Jacqueline Naranjo of the American music magazine Music Connection gave the record eight out of ten in an album review dated 20 February 2026. She writes that “ATEEZ keeps the momentum going with their 13th mini-album”, and that “the five-track release is filled with earworm hooks and memorable outros that make their songs feel exciting and dynamic”.

Billboard put the record on its list of the 25 best K-pop albums of 2026 so far, dated 15 July 2026. The entry, filed under the Billboard Korea name, says the album “begins with the mysterious, shadowed trap R&B of ‘Ghost,’ then fires into the near-limitless charge of ‘Adrenaline,’ the EDM title track that moves like a fuel-loaded truck at full speed”. The same entry says the record does not end in heat: “if ATEEZ’s golden hour once burned molten crimson, this album catches the stranger colors that surface as the heat falls into dusk.”

Debashree Dutta of Rolling Stone India gave the record’s third track, ‘NASA’, a piece of its own on 19 February 2026, and put the title track on the outlet’s list of the top ten K-pop songs of 2026 so far, dated 6 July 2026. Of ‘NASA’ she writes: “it’s got a bit of everything: gritty industrial hip-hop, glitchy electronic beats, and these huge, cinematic swells that make it feel like a movie soundtrack.” Of the title track, in the later piece: “the adrenaline in the song builds melodically before exploding into a super energetic chorus.”

Among the tracks

The album introduction calls the title track, ‘Adrenaline’, a track that proves the group’s energy is still boiling, “like an engine sound ringing as though it will burst”. Music Connection calls the same song “an explosive EDM anthem”, and describes ‘Ghost’ and ‘NASA’ as “darker and rhythmic R&B/rap tracks”.

The third track, ‘NASA’, is the song Rolling Stone India gave a whole piece to. Dutta calls it “a dense, glitch-hop fever dream that uses textured distortion to mirror the chaos of deep space”, and writes that “it finds a perfect equilibrium between staccato, rhythmic rap verses and a layer of moody vocals that coat the song in a haunting sense of tension”.

Music Connection picks the fourth track, ‘On The Road’, as the record’s example of that quality, “with its feel-good and hopeful harmonies”. Billboard reads the same song as “a lyrical pop letter to the ATINY who have walked beside ATEEZ for seven years”, and the closing track, ‘Choose’, as the fan song.

Numbers

Financial News reported on 16 February 2026 that the record reached number three on the Billboard 200 in the United States. The same report puts its first week at 195,000 albums plus 5,000 in streams converted to album units, 200,000 in all, above the 179,000 first week of GOLDEN HOUR : Part.2 and the group’s own highest in the United States. The outlet also says the group has now put six records in a row into the top three of the Billboard 200, from the ninth mini album THE WORLD EP.2 : OUTLAW to this one. Rolling Stone India writes that the title track entered at number one on both Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales and Dance Digital Song Sales charts.

Around it

In an interview with Soompi around the release, Hongjoong introduced the record as the group’s first of the year and its first since the renewal of July 2025, and Seonghwa said they had prepared it with the same heart as their debut. Yunho described the title song’s sound as one built to match the group’s performance, and Mingi said all eight members chose it as the title track unanimously.

The series continues with GOLDEN HOUR : Part.5. The renewal and this record’s place in it are set out in the story of the renewal, and the order of the series and the line-up in Who Are ATEEZ?.