ATEEZ released Golden Hour: Part.1, its tenth EP, on 31 May 2024 through KQ Entertainment, with RCA Records handling the United States. It is short, six tracks in a little over 17 minutes, and it opens a new series after the group closed its long-running The World saga in December 2023. We took a few weeks to live with it before writing this review, and the extra time changed our minds about more than one song.
The concept is the golden hour itself: the brief stretch of soft light around sunrise and sunset, used here as a picture of a moment worth holding on to. That idea gives the record a looser, warmer palette than the dystopian storytelling fans came to expect from The World, and the group mostly makes the change work.
Tracklist and credits
- 1. Golden Hour1:24, a spoken-word intro over member harmonies
- 2. Blind3:18
- 3. WORK2:52, title track
- 4. Empty Box3:33
- 5. Shaboom3:31
- 6. Siren2:44
- WritersLongtime producer Eden and his team (including Maddox, Ollounder, Peperoni and Oliv) on every track; leader Hongjoong and Mingi co-wrote the lyrics of all five songs after the intro.
- MembersHongjoong, Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung and Jongho
Track by track
Golden Hour. The intro is a calm spoken passage with the members' harmonies drifting underneath. It sets the mood in under a minute and a half and does not outstay its welcome.
Blind. This is the album's best song in the editors' view. It leans into a Latin pop groove with a trap beat underneath, and the group switches between sultry, restrained pre-choruses and a full-throated finish. It sounds like ATEEZ enjoying itself, which is not always the case on the more conceptual records.
WORK. The title track is a mid-tempo hip-hop song about grinding for success, built around a chant-like hook. It is a deliberate step away from the bombast of earlier singles such as "Bouncy" and "Crazy Form." Our reservation is that, at under three minutes and with little variation in the arrangement, it never quite builds to the payoff the group usually delivers. The performance carries it on stage more than the recording does on headphones.
Empty Box. A soft pop ballad about letting go of old memories in order to start again. The breathy vocal takes give it a gentle, nostalgic quality, and after two heavy tracks it is a welcome pause.
Shaboom. The most playful song here pairs relaxed, reggae-flavored verses with an EDM chorus. The switches between the two are abrupt, and some listeners will find them jarring, but the energy is hard to resist.
Siren. The closer is the hardest-hitting track, a rap-led song over heavy trap production with lyrics about confidence and staying the course. Its bridge builds well into the final chorus and sends the EP out on a high.
Blind sounds like ATEEZ enjoying itself, which is not always the case on the more conceptual records.
A record-sized first week
Whatever reservations we have about the title track, the numbers left no doubt about demand. Hanteo Chart reported more than 1.1 million copies sold in South Korea within four days, making it ATEEZ's third consecutive release to pass a million in its first week. In the United States, Golden Hour: Part.1 debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 dated 15 June 2024, behind Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department. It earned 131,000 equivalent album units, 127,000 of them in album sales, which Billboard called the largest week of 2024 for any K-pop album. It was also the week's best-selling album and the group's fifth consecutive top 10 entry.
The EP reached No. 1 on the Circle album chart in Korea and on Oricon's album chart in Japan, and No. 4 on the UK Official Albums Chart. It went on to spend seven weeks on the Billboard 200, at the time the longest run of any ATEEZ album.
Our verdict
In the editors' view, Golden Hour: Part.1 is a confident start to a new era rather than a career peak. Its strength is range: Latin pop, reggae, a ballad and hard trap sit side by side without the EP feeling scattered, and the group's vocal and rap lines both get room. The weak spot is the title track, which plays it safer than the songs around it. As an opening chapter, it leaves us curious about where the series goes next.
Update, October 2026: how the series continued
The Golden Hour series has kept going for more than two years. Golden Hour: Part.2 followed on 15 November 2024 with the title track "Ice on My Teeth" and gave ATEEZ its second Billboard 200 No. 1, with 184,000 units. Golden Hour: Part.3 arrived on 13 June 2025, led by "Lemon Drop," and debuted at No. 2; "Lemon Drop" also became the group's first Billboard Hot 100 entry, at No. 69. A reissue, the In Your Fantasy Edition, came out on 11 July 2025, and its title track "In Your Fantasy" entered the Hot 100 at No. 68.
Golden Hour: Part.4 was released on 6 February 2026 with the title track "Adrenaline." It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 200,000 units, then a career-best week for the group in the US. Golden Hour: Part.5, led by "BAD," followed on 26 June 2026. It sold more than 1.88 million copies in its first week on Hanteo, a group record, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated 11 July 2026 with 228,000 units, ATEEZ's third No. 1 and its biggest US week so far. As of October 2026, ATEEZ has not announced a sixth part.
Editor's note: This story first appeared on kpop-fandom on 8 July 2024. It was rewritten and updated in October 2026: we verified the tracklist, running times and writing credits, removed an unverified claim about who narrates the intro and instrument details we could not confirm, replaced fan-assigned member positions with a plain member list, added the album's chart and sales results, marked opinions as the editors' view and added an update on Parts 2 to 5 of the series.
Sources Billboard: Taylor Swift scores seventh straight week at No. 1 on Billboard 200, Soompi: ATEEZ surpasses 1 million sales with Golden Hour: Part.1, Korea JoongAng Daily: Ateez reaches No. 2 on Billboard 200 with Golden Hour: Part.3, The Korea Times: ATEEZ injects Adrenaline into fourth Golden Hour release, Complex: ATEEZ's Golden Hour: Part.5 tops the Billboard 200.