They played the sound of metal before the song

In three lines

• MONSTA X release their new EP 'The Phase' on September 4.
• A mood sampler went up on the agency's official channels on August 22.
• The EP holds six tracks, with 'MAGIC' as the title track.

The clip below isn't the song — it's the mood sampler. 'MAGIC' arrives September 4, so there's no audio and no music video yet.

What's out so far

Item	Detail
Group	MONSTA X
Album	EP 'The Phase'
Release	September 4
Title track	'MAGIC'
Tracks	6
Mood sampler	Published August 22
Agency	Starship Entertainment

What a mood sampler is

A mood sampler doesn't play you the song. It shows the atmosphere and nothing else.

It differs from a teaser, too. A teaser usually cuts a piece from the track itself, while a mood sampler is what you use when the finished song isn't ready to be heard. That's why it arrives while the release is still weeks away.

This one is set in a dark warehouse, and what carried was a heavy metallic sound. The material came before the music.

The word 'phase'

A phase is a stage or a stretch — a word for cutting time into sections.

It presumes a before and an after. If this is one phase, there was a previous one and another is coming. It isn't a word that announces completion.

By the agency's description, the album carries music of different textures: confidence and drive, love, longing and hope. Six tracks each holding a different mood and emotional direction. That refusal to bind everything into one colour matches the 'phase' in the title.

The title track being 'MAGIC'

The mood sampler showed a dark warehouse and metal sounds, yet the title track is called 'MAGIC'.

Metal and magic don't sit together easily. Metal is hard and physically present; magic stands on the opposite side.

If that mismatch is deliberate, there's something to check: which way the word magic runs inside the song. Toward wonder, or toward trickery — you have to hear it to know.

What to check today

Mark September 4. There's still more than a week.

Then focus on the sound in the mood sampler. It's a video that gives you material before music, so how that material gets used in the finished track becomes the later checkpoint.

Last, keep the title in mind. A phase is a word that implies a next one.

That's the last of the numbers. Now, the music.