MANIFESTO : DAY 1

The record

MANIFESTO : DAY 1 is ENHYPEN’s third mini album, released on 4 July 2022 with six tracks. The title track is ‘Future Perfect (Pass the MIC)’. It came half a year after the January repackage DIMENSION : ANSWER and opens MANIFESTO, the third series after BORDER and DIMENSION.

BELIFT LAB’s album introduction on Bugs describes the record as the declaration of seven boys who set out a step ahead to find the way for their own generation. The same text says the concept photos in three versions, ‘D’, ‘J’ and ‘M’, join into a single story. The label says the members tried rap for the first time since their debut on the title track, and that Jake took part in writing the lyrics of ‘SHOUT OUT’.

Reviews

Tássia Assis of NME gave the record four stars out of five on 5 July 2022. The review opens: “‘Manifesto : Day 1’ is precisely the statement that it claims to be.” Across six tracks, it says, the group show “growth and breadth, but also their refusal to conform”.

The same review reads the record as moving in new directions while keeping the elements of the group’s identity. With no hyphen in the title track any more, Assis noted, there is still the narrated intro and outro, “the gentle mid-tempo bound to go viral, the addictive B-sides; everything that made all their previous releases so solid”.

Among the tracks

The album introduction presents the title track ‘Future Perfect (Pass the MIC)’ as a song in Chicago drill, a genre new to the Korean pop scene. In it, it says, seven boys tell their generation that they will go ahead first and ask it to come along. Bugs credits the lyrics and music to Wonderkid, “hitman”bang, Supreme Boi, Jacob Aaron (THE HUB) and THE HUB 88 (THE HUB). Assis described the song as “inspired by Chicago drill hip-hop and led by an urgent whistle sample”, and wrote: “It’s not ENHYPEN’s easiest song to digest, and they don’t want it to be.”

The third track, ‘ParadoXXX Invasion’, is the one Assis called “the album’s definite highlight, brimming with title track potential”. It leads with the old-school hip-hop of the early 2000s, and the album introduction says it answers the adults who treat teenagers as mere children with the line “free as we are, illogic is our logic”. ‘SHOUT OUT’ is alternative rock driven by distorted guitar. Assis wrote that on it the group “go full-on early-aughts emo”, and that it marks the first time a member took part in writing the lyrics.

The album introduction places ‘TFW (That Feeling When)’ in the line of soft pop after ‘Polaroid Love’ and ‘Not For Sale’. Assis traced the same line and wrote that “ENHYPEN’s vocal growth is on display here”. The closing ‘Foreshadow’ carries a narration the seven members split across three languages. Assis pointed to its “sidechained psychedelic beats that merge with distorted, haunting vocals” and regretted that a song this good became “a 45-second sample sandwiched between narrations”.

Numbers

Circle Chart counted the record number two on its album chart for week 28 of 2022 (3 to 9 July), with the Weverse edition counted separately at number six the same week. The title track was 108th on the digital chart that week. The record entered the Billboard 200 and Billboard’s World Albums on the chart dated 13 August 2022, six weeks after release. On the Billboard 200 that week’s number six was its peak; on World Albums it rose from number two on 13 August to number one on 20 August.

Number six on the Billboard 200 was ENHYPEN’s first top ten. Herald Business wrote on 31 August 2026 that with this record the group “broke through the top-10 wall”. The Korea Economic Daily reported the same day that seven albums in a row since this one had made the chart’s top ten.

After it

The next May came DARK BLOOD, the first record of the fourth series, BLOOD. How the run of top tens led to the first number one, for THE SIN : BLISS in August 2026, is set out in the Billboard 200 number-one story.