TREASURE EP.1 : All To Zero

The record

TREASURE EP.1 : All To Zero is ATEEZ’s debut mini album, released on 24 October 2018 with six tracks. ‘Pirate King’ and ‘Treasure’ were both issued as debut songs, and the record opens the five-part TREASURE series.

The album introduction carried by Bugs says the group’s name means “everything about teenagers”, and that the eight members had built a following at home and abroad from performance videos before they debuted. The same text calls a double title track unusual for a rookie act, and introduces ‘Pirate King’ as a trap-styled song whose hook recalls a sea shanty and ‘Treasure’ as a trap song in an oriental mode. Production was led by EDEN with the composers BUDDY and LEEZ, and the members Hongjoong and Mingi are credited as lyricists, the introduction says. The eight members and the order of the series are set out in Who Are ATEEZ?.

Reviews

The idol-pop webzine Idology (아이돌로지) covered the record in its new-release column 「1st Listen : 2018년 10월 하순」 — first listens, late October 2018 — dated 18 November 2018. Four writers each filed a piece.

Mano wrote that “the genres and messages of the individual tracks are varied and each its own, but in their place a single theme running through every track has made an organic, consistent flow”. Mano added that “the theme and story that run through the whole album argue the record’s case and lift the attention it holds”, and closed on wanting to know “where the map of an ATEEZ that has only just set sail will point next”.

Mimyo called the record “a combination of a shrewdly designed idol act and a well-made piece of pop”. Starting from the observation that a concept’s real strength does not have to lie in detailed lore, Mimyo wrote that “the grammar of the idol market may have grown more complicated, but that is not necessarily an exception to the virtues of pop”.

Quibbie wrote that “the intro alone is the high point”, and described the two title tracks as “a structure in which the vocalists lift the song with ambitious shouting and then the rappers arrive and make a dramatic drop”. The last sentence was: “a debut EP that shows ambition in every direction.”

Simdyang called it “a debut EP like the prologue of a long epic”, and wrote that “what makes it striking is that their beginning is not a confession to an ideal met at first sight but a hand held out for comrades to ride out the swell together”.

Among the tracks

Simdyang grounded that reading in two lines. Setting the closing line of ‘Intro : Long Journey’, “Will you join us?”, beside the “Will you be my friend?” of ‘Pirate King’, Simdyang wrote that “in the ATEEZ world the punishing idol market turns into a rough sea, and the fandom becomes both the treasure they are looking for and their comrades”. The closing sentence: “they have found a good gap in how an idol act brings a fictional world in.”

On ‘Pirate King’, Mimyo wrote that “the hook is not sharply drawn and the structure is complicated too, but it passes through its playing time in a flash on strong tension and focus”. The album introduction says the song had already been heard before the debut, through a Mnet reality programme. Quibbie described the tracks that follow, ‘Twilight’ and ‘Stay’, as “a parade that breathes actively with the listener”, and the closing ‘My Way’ as “the fireworks of a reflection shared after the first step of a long journey”.

Numbers

Idology placed the group fifth in its year-end feature 「결산 2018 : ③ 올해의 신인」 — the rookies of 2018 — dated 13 March 2019. That piece says the webzine logged 57 acts that made a formal idol debut during 2018 and that 11 writers voted for the ten it picked; the ATEEZ entry reprints the sentences Simdyang had written in the column above.

Billboard reported in a chart story dated 20 January 2020 that the record eventually reached number nine on the US World Albums chart in late 2019. The same story says that by then it had sold 10,000 copies in America, making it the best-selling ATEEZ album there.

What came next

The TREASURE series continues with TREASURE EP.2 : Zero To One, out three months after the debut and covered by Idology in the same column.