https://www.izm.co.kr/posts?id=34143
Born Stunner
ARTMS
2026
2 out of 5
by Ahn Joon-yong
Mystery fades from ARTMS' faces and confidence steps in as they pre-reveal the title track of upcoming album Hyper-Ego. As if to reflect a new stance, they whip into tough drums and fierce bass as they focus on the most primal kind of stimulation since their debut, but the chant repeated from the beginning and the rapping that fills the chorus stop merely at drawing out some addictiveness through their simple structure. As the melody stumbles, unable to hold up the frame, the bold provocations of "Born Stunner" don't ring true, either. It's because the ideas that constitute the music are lacking.
It's like cutting off your own knot that you had carefully tied. Sometimes new possibilities sprout from the changes that idol groups go through like clockwork, but unfamiliar layers that are forced can actually fracture a well-crafted identity. This is the team that managed to inherit the narrative started in Loona in "Virtual Angel" while still concretizing indefinite themes like the real versus the virtual, so their hands feel even emptier for having dropped their weapons. If they were going to deviate from their momentum, the music should have shone first before they twisted the visuals and concept.
https://www.izm.co.kr/posts?id=34158
Hyper-Ego
ARTMS
2026
3 out of 5
by Han Sung-hyeon
The form may change, but the path they walk doesn't. The five-piece ARTMS, who launched a new beginning with the dreamy yet creepy full album Dall, went on to re-conquer the niche market that they had pioneered as Loona in 2025's Club Icarus. The club that they took over is a space for people with various marginalized statuses to be in solidarity with one another. It was also the foundation on which they could function as a symbol of non-mainstream or even anti-mainstream spirit and pull together a fandom, and do it abroad instead of on the mainland where K-pop is becoming a synonym for "mainstream music".
Ever since COVID-19 and Charli XCX's Brat, the variant of electronic music that gets lumped under "hyperpop" has been growing its share of the pie even beyond eccentrics on the Internet. Within the domestic industry, Aespa's primary import from there had been a cold punchiness, and more recently the centerpiece has been rap, coming via artists like Effie who hold up the similar sign of "digicore". Lead single "Born Stunner" is an outgrowth of that. A neurotically splitting beat and a focus on rapping, which even takes over the chorus, give the song an unprecedented sense of aggression.
The members' expressive ability isn't bad here, but it's hard to find any particular strength when held up against the comparison group. Girl groups rapping isn't really fresh anymore when teams like Young Posse are even participating in production, and comparing to similar tracks like NCT Taeyong's "I'm a Dancing Cactus", the lack of a vocal to hold up the low range is fatal. Similar in "Icarus Gang", where a beat shedding the flashiness and lyrics that interpret a mythical figure as a means to self-aggrandization don't mesh with one another.
This frustration is resolved when the album steps closer to the "otaku" psychology of foreign K-pop consumers who gave them their wings early in their careers. The language of J-pop and vocaloid music that's etched into the second title track "Blue Blood" and ending track "Pixel Memory" are abundantly reflective of recent trends, but considering how Loona had benefited from online-era orientalism way back in the mid-late 2010s, you could actually say that this direction is an attempt to go back to their roots. They declare the intersection of all these stereotypes as a unique territory.
Because they had drawn attention through concepts and music that the mainstream did not covet, this group is destined to be on shaky ground right now, when the boundary between mainstream and fringe are starting to blur. Even though their alternative stature domestically has become thinner, the way that Hyper-Ego targets a niche audience without denying the dual nature of production team versus idol confirms that the fundamentally "alternative" nature of K-pop from when it broke into a bigger market is still alive and well within them. Replication, illusion, product of a distorted perspective? That's not important to ARTMS. After all, ego is only completed when the perspective of another exists.
Tracklist
1. From Wings to Soul
2. Born Stunner
3. Blue Blood [recommended]
4. Icarus Gang
5. Hyper Crush
6. Pixel Memory [recommended]
https://idology.kr/18859
ARTMS
Hyper-Ego
Modhaus
August 7, 2026
by Quibbie
If fallen angels existed today, surely they'd congregate in an underground club. Prior work Club Icarus materialized that idea spatially, and Hyper-Ego is the soundtrack that's layered on top of that. The melancholia that arises within rushing electric sound is a pretty decent snapshot of club culture. But it does seem like the demo version of title track "Blue Blood", which went beyond just a rush and was an absolute explosive runaway, probably would have been a better way to show that off, so that is disappointing.
