REVIVE+IVE's second album, out on 23 February 2026 with 12 tracks and two title tracks. IZM, Idology and Real Sound all wrote about it.
REVIVE+ is IVE’s second album, released at 6 p.m. KST on 23 February 2026 with 12 tracks. The title tracks are ‘BLACKHOLE’ and the pre-release ‘BANG BANG’. Munhwa Ilbo reported the release time that day, citing the agency.
Starship Entertainment’s album introduction presents the two as a double title and says ‘BANG BANG’ was put out ahead of the record, on 9 February. The same text describes the album as widening a story that began with the self into one about a shared ‘we’.
The last six tracks are a solo song for each member, in order: Jang Wonyoung’s ‘8’, Gaeul’s ‘Odd’, Leeseo’s ‘Super ICY’, Liz’s ‘Unreal’, Rei’s ‘In Your Heart’ and An Yu-jin’s ‘Force’.
Han Seong-hyeon wrote about the record for IZM on 9 March 2026. Of the second half he wrote that “the solo numbers, cut to measure while keeping their overlap with the group’s music to a minimum, stand out all the more for it”, and that “whatever their finish, each one has a character of its own”. The same piece locates the revival of the title in how far the members now command the material.
Cho Eun-jae covered it for Idology in the new-release column for February, published on 13 March 2026. “The pre-released title song ‘BANG BANG’, arriving as the track after the other title song ‘BLACKHOLE’, gains a little more weight from the placing,” he wrote, and he read the solo half at the end as showing the group’s sense of itself more clearly than the front half does.
Real Sound took the two title tracks in separate instalments of its weekly new-release column. On 27 February 2026 Eriko Ishii wrote of ‘BLACKHOLE’ that “apart from the beat, about all that sounds is the bass and the synths; the focus seems to be less on what is layered over what than on how to make space by not sounding”, and called it “a model of what happens when you take the stadium rock of the past apart and refine the beat to the limit”.
‘BANG BANG’ came out on 9 February 2026 as the pre-released title track. Han Seong-hyeon covered it on its own for IZM on 19 February: “IVE keep the cowboy sound and slot hyperpop percussion and rap in between, a tactic that pushes the tension right to the end,” he wrote, adding that the rapping and the vocal performance hold their breath together through the rush.
Cho Eun-jae wrote about the same song in Idology’s weekly column on 15 February 2026: “The pleasure of the runaway sound built on a western-movie concept is what reaches you first, but what stays longer is the act of looking down from above that IVE have carried since their debut.” Tomoyuki Mori covered it for Real Sound on 13 February, writing that “its function as dance music and the fun of the way it rhymes come together into a song that goes past a trend or a period”.
Of the solo songs, IZM singled out Gaeul’s ‘Odd’ and Rei’s ‘In Your Heart’, writing that the two “do not stop at rediscovering a character but push it all the way to the most they can do with it”, and reading ‘In Your Heart’ as pouring a rap performance into digicore. Of Jang Wonyoung’s ‘8’ the same piece said the sharpness of the sound is startling.
Circle Chart placed the album at number two on its album chart for week nine of 2026 (22 to 28 February), the week of release, on 782,574 copies for the week.
On the same week’s Digital Chart, ‘BANG BANG’ was at number two and ‘BLACKHOLE’ at number 10. Among the solo songs, Jang Wonyoung’s ‘8’ reached number 17 that week.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
IVE's Jang Wonyoung is credited on the lyrics of two songs on the second album REVIVE+. She is one of four writers on 'BANG BANG', the double title track released first on 9 February 2026, and the only name on the lyric credit of the solo track '8' on the album that followed on 23 February.
