WOODZ Fragments Humanity and Being in First Full-Length Album Archive. 1
Photo: EDAM Entertainment
After thirteen years in the Korean music industry, genre-bending soloist WOODZ (Cho Seungyoun) releases his first full-length album Archive. 1, a sprawling, experimental seventeen-track album that feels more at home in ‘90s experimental rock than it does in his K-Pop origins. Uncovering Archive. 1 on the day of its release, even in the knowledge of WOODZ’s consistent, handwrought artistry, feels like opening the seminal equivalent of a musical Pandora’s box: discovering a release fresh on the cusp of changing the boundaries of a genre (that he himself refined.)
It feels compulsory to name WOODZ’s 2023 breakout hit “Drowning” in a review of really any post-”Drowning” WOODZ work, and even to this day, it continues to dominate domestic Korean charts, almost three years after its release. A breakout release that went mega-platinum during WOODZ’s military enlistment, pop-rock ballad “Drowning” douses itself in gut-crushing heartbreak, belting his lungs out in despair. But, for a domestic music scene that tends to lean toward ballads and easy-listening more than cutting-edge experimental works, “Drowning” is as punchy as a domestic hit can be when it comes to rock-forward songs.
All this to say, Archive. 1 is unapologetically not “Drowning.” In a post-Drowning society, searching for the next hit is easy: a quick copy-and-paste sad rock-ballad. And it might be the most profitable option, if the less inspired one. But what made “Drowning”—a mini-album B-side that took over a year to gain traction after its release—an exceptionally organic hit was its raw emotional gravitas, which is something that cannot cleanly be replicated for the sake of chasing a career high.
This makes Archive. 1 all the more admirable. Rather than claw back to “Drowning,” post-mlitary WOODZ makes it very clear in this winding, gritty rock-and-roll spectacle that his identity, his artistry, is the ultimate priority. “You can’t control me!” he shrieks (literally, metal screams) on “Stray,” one of the album’s climactic pieces. In an interview with USA Today, he makes this very clear: “I did not want to settle for just mediocre sounds or mediocre results. This is an opportunity for me to redefine myself.” His pre-release singles in the post-enlistment period dabbled in what it means to be a new WOODZ, with him candidly admitting his first attempt at a full album was scrapped in September 2025.
Archive. 1 finally made the cut. WOODZ has spent the last few releases getting edgier and grittier, pushing away from pop or R&B towards more guitar, more grit, and more rock. Archive. 1 is the culmination of this genre-bending. It’s an aggressively rock album that splays itself from cold wave, bossa nova, metal, prog rock, rap rock, punk: it’s all in there. And in its seventeen-track glory, it doesn’t waver for a second, leaping and diving off musical cliffs as it seeks to define WOODZ’s existence, and human existence along the way. The result can only be described as music that seeks to be, at its core, artistry above all else. It also doesn’t read like a release that wants to be experimental for the sake of being fresh. Rather, the album takes you step-by-seventeen-track-step through a type of existence that feels raw and laid bare, and ease, anger, love, despair, extinction.
TRACKLIST:
“00:30”
“Super Lazy”
“Dayfly”
“The Spark”
“Human Extinction”
“Stray”
“Bloodline”
“Downtown”
“STOP THAT”
“NA NA NA”
“Struggle”
“BEEP”
“Plastic”
“GLASS”
“CINEMA”
“SAMO”
“To My January”
The album archives its own life, and shows a journey from a laid-back rap-rock and distorted introductory tracks (“00:30”, “Super Lazy”). Self-actualizing throughout, “Dayfly” offers the first hint at the darker corners of the album as WOODZ strives to push forward: “Even if I die tomorrow, I must die right here.” Wah-wah pedal abundant, “The Spark” strives forward with swagger before the album’s first zenith: title-track provocateur “Human Extinction.”
“Human Extinction” offers its true-to-self apocalyptic-grade atmosphere. The layered atmospheric vocals are secondary to the rushing musical landscape of the track, characterized in space-opera-esque drama and sweeping arpeggios. The music video is as much an art film as it is a sonic accompaniment: the protagonists face the burden of existence, the extinction of the self in conformity, as they tread a line between life and death, ego and superego, clean and dirty, light and dark. Edward Munch’s “At the Deathbed” painting looms over the characters as they eat: a girl who cuts her hair to be like her peers and the doctor who operates on her. It all explodes over WOODZ in a shower of fireworks, the light piercing the dark—human extinction. Think about who you are, he seems to beg, before your “self” goes extinct.
The rage against extinction and his anger against the pressure of conformity land frenetically in “Stray,” with its metal screams and heavy distortion: “ You can’t control me [...] I’m not a sucker.”
Somehow, the album is only beginning. It bounces back from anger into the oozing ego of pentatonic “Bloodline,” one of the lead singles of the album and perhaps his most quintessential rock track. Neighboring “Downtown” borrows those classic ‘70s rock fashionings, from theme to sound, singing in English of the open road against overdriven power chords, Korea’s own “Highway to Hell.”
Anger aside, “STOP THAT” and “NA NA NA” ease the sound up, brightening into the more alternative leaning, most pop-punk-forward tracks on the album, in the vein of WOODZ’s prior EP “Colorful Trauma” and perhaps the most familiar sound he brings to Archive. 1.
The album’s next three-track foray leans more atmospheric, with “Struggle” integrating gospel samples against a cold-wave-esque chanted underpinning. “BEEP” goes in the opposite direction, still a bit muted and atmospheric, but layering in bossa nova and samba in a track that feels quicker than its three-minute run-time. “Plastic” warps the voicing even further, truly suffocating the vocals in plastic and layered harmonics. While none are the homeruns of the album, they’re key contributors to the eponymous archive, distinct in their messaging and providing a respite against the emotional slam-dunks they pad.
Which brings us to “GLASS,” my personal favorite and the album’s poetic release. Sung fully in English, WOODZ does what we all he know he can do (re: “Drowning”) and sings with a voice thick with heartbreak, bile, and despair, before culminating in a beautiful, layered post-chorus that can only be described as cathartic. “Once you start to crack you know there’s no fixing that, when you’re made of glass.” And then the song shatters.
Pre-release rock-ballad single “CINEMA” continues this climactic sadness, comparing the memories of a love lost with the experience of replaying a movie. Guitar-forward “SAMO,” another personal standout, progresses from acoustic sadness, coming off the emotional releases of his predecessors before wading into something dark and shadowy by the chorus, before landing on a sultry bend-ridden guitar solo. It’s this sorrowful run, “GLASS” to “CINEMA” to “SAMO,” that feels the most evocative on the album, and the most defining. So of course, the album walks it back in soaring, western-leaning “To My January,” which archives the moments of the album introspectively: “Days go by, I’m on my way to my January.”
In my time as a K-Pop reviewer, I can’t say I have seen anything like Archive. 1, more akin to my experience of tuning into Radiohead or Muse than any of WOODZ’s closest genre counterparts. It’s a pleasure, as both a rock fan and a K-Pop fan, to see an artist like this break onto the scene so organically, and choose to keep climbing higher in pursuit of his own artistic identity. Across seventeen tracks, and 49 minutes, and thirteen years as a musician, Archive. 1 is a triumph in songwriting, a rock-laden journey across human existence and WOODZ’s own, personal artistry, ever on the cusp of further greatness.
TITLE TRACK: 10/10
MUSIC VIDEO: 10/10
B-SIDES: 10/10
TOTAL: 10/10
Edited by Bryn Claybourne