TREASURE EPILOGUE : Action To Answer

The record

TREASURE EPILOGUE : Action To Answer is a mini album ATEEZ released on 6 January 2020 with five tracks. The title track is ‘Answer’, and KQ Entertainment’s album introduction calls the record the conclusion of the TREASURE series.

That introduction, carried by Bugs, describes the record as “a banquet met at the far end of the journey”, a place where the members look back on how it began and ask “what was it that we really wanted?”. The same text presents ‘Answer’ as a song where EDM and hip-hop meet, and says the sound that shifts and rushes in the second half recalls a group that “ran breathless in search of the treasure”. The order of the five records in the series is set out in Who Are ATEEZ?.

Reviews

The music webzine IZM reviewed the title track ‘Answer’ as a single in January 2020. The writer is Park Su-jin, and the piece is the first IZM had written about the group.

Park introduced the group as one that “shows strong EDM-based dance and knife-sharp unison choreography, as though standing for the meaning of its name, ‘everything about teenagers’”, and wrote that “for the sake of building a world of their own the group has released records under the name ‘Treasure’, and this work is the last stop on that series”.

On the song itself the review says: “the energy the song has compressed is good, though.” On the staging: “like the catchphrase ‘global performance idol’, the powerful dance on stage is another thing to enjoy.” And on the series as a whole: “it keeps to the way a Korean idol act arrives — gathering several short EPs into a world, slipping soft fan songs in between — but there is more than enough here to leave a mark.”

Among the tracks

The fan song Park mentions is on this record too. It is the third track, ‘Star 1117’, and the album introduction presents it as an R&B ballad addressed to the official fandom, ATINY, whose name is in the numbers: 17 November, the day the fandom name was given.

The second track, ‘Horizon’, is a song the leader Kim Hong-joong wrote and composed. The introduction presents it as a song where hip-hop and EDM meet, and notes that Kim’s name appears again after ‘AURORA’ and ‘Sunrise’ on the two records before this one. ‘Precious’ is the full version of ‘Precious (Overture)’ from the first full-length album, and the same text calls it the follow-up track to the debut song ‘Treasure’.

Numbers

Billboard reported in a chart story dated 20 January 2020 that the record entered the US World Albums chart at number five. It earned 3,000 equivalent album units in the week ending 9 January, of which 1,000 were traditional sales, the story says. Number five ties the group’s best position on that chart, set by TREASURE EP.2.

By the same story, ‘Answer’ entered the World Digital Song Sales chart at number six, tying ‘WONDERLAND’ as the group’s highest-charting song, and the B-side ‘Horizon’ also entered that week at number 18. The record entered Heatseekers Albums at number 19, the group’s fourth entry there.

What came next

The TREASURE series closes here, and six months later ZERO : FEVER Part.1 opens the next one.