ZERO : FEVER EPILOGUE

The record

ZERO : FEVER EPILOGUE is a repackaged mini album ATEEZ released on 10 December 2021 with ten tracks. ‘Turbulence’ and ‘The Real (Heung Version)’ were both title tracks. It closes the FEVER series and is the group’s first repackage.

The album introduction carried by Bugs describes the record as a place “standing at the far end of the journey, through a long season of fever”. Of the first title track, ‘Turbulence’, it says the song carries “the anguish of today’s youth about life”, and that it likens youth to air turbulence nobody can predict; the same text names a rocking sound and a string sound as the devices holding that contrast. The three records of the FEVER series are set out in order in Who Are ATEEZ?.

Reviews

The idol-pop webzine Idology (아이돌로지) covered the second title track, ‘The Real (Heung Version)’, in 「Monthly : 2021년 12월 – 싱글」 — singles, December 2021 — dated 16 January 2022. Two writers filed, Mano and Yemi.

Mano started with where the song came from: “it is a new arrangement of the final-round song from the survival competition programme 〈Kingdom〉, broadcast on Mnet.” The core of the new arrangement, the note says, is “a synthesiser source resembling a Korean shawm that rings out powerfully all over it”, and Mano wrote that this Korean traditional element “adds a great deal of grandeur to the song while, ironically enough, underlining the sort of statelessness the team has consistently pursued”.

Yemi read the picture the song draws. “A loosened school tie, a baseball jacket and a rider’s jacket move through the styling and add up to the sort of student who knows how to have a good time at a Korean school,” the note says, and: “shouting ‘Humble and Kindness’ on the way to ‘watch us dance’ and showing off resembles ATEEZ, at once wholly outgoing and firm in its teamwork.”

A title track out of a competition

The conclusion Mano put on the song starts from a condition: “hearing that a competition song had been made the title track, I honestly had big doubts, and this is a single that more than clears that puzzlement away.” The note calls it a place that “pushes the energy that is one of the team’s biggest weapons to its limit and finishes the last chapter of the series handsomely”. Of the music video Mano wrote that it “meshes without a gap with the song’s rowdy, exuberant register and gives real satisfaction both visually and aurally”.

What Yemi picked out is not the arrangement but the words. After writing that “the synthesiser resembling Korean traditional instruments, and the traditional dress and lion mask that add to the boisterous mood, blend into the original concept without friction on the strength of being Korean”, the note sets three lines of the lyric side by side and reads the endings: “‘이런 게 바로 멋인기라’, ‘이것이 멋이여’ and ‘이런 게 바로 멋입니다’ — when the difference in nuance between them shows, it is quite a thrill for a Korean speaker, and ‘The Real’, keeping the force that holds a global fandom while not missing the detail you can catch because you know Korean culture, became a more interesting song for it.” The three are one sentence — this is what style is — closed three different ways.

Among the tracks

The back half of the repackage rewinds the series. By the album introduction, ‘WAVE (Overture)’ remakes ‘WAVE’ from TREASURE EP.3 for orchestra, and ‘WONDERLAND (Symphony No.9 “From The Wonderland”)’ remakes the title track of the first full-length album over a sample of the fourth movement of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony. The ninth track is a version of ‘Answer’ from TREASURE EPILOGUE with LA POEM taking part.

The fourth and fifth tracks are Korean versions of Japanese releases. The introduction says ‘Still Here’ had been the title track of the first Japanese full-length album in March 2021 and ‘Better’ a B-side on the first Japanese mini album. The third track, ‘The Letter’, is addressed to the fandom, and the same text names a quiet melody line and a percussion sound as its marks.

What came next

The album introduction says that at release an arena world tour, ‘THE FELLOWSHIP : BEGINNING OF THE END’, was set to begin the following January. The FEVER series closes here, and in the summer of 2022 THE WORLD EP.1 : MOVEMENT opens a third series.