For I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” the creature declares himself powerful precisely because he fears nothing. And yet, when he finally lays eyes upon Victor’s corpse, the very revenge he’d longed for now fulfilled, he weeps. He was the only one in this world who could understand me, the monster says, and I was the only one who could understand him. Was the creature truly fearless? Or was it that an unbearable loneliness frightened him so deeply that he cursed Victor with isolation instead of death? In the music video for “CELEBRATION,” LE SSERAFIM rewrites that ending. Much like the creature once did to Victor, the girl group crosses deserts and glaciers in pursuit of their own creature, but when they finally find him, they don’t thrust a knife or a gun toward him. Instead, they extend a warm hand. True to the lyrics “I’m not alone, creatures” and “dance till you’re about to break” from “Creatures,” LE SSERAFIM dances alongside monsters of every shape and form, and all at once, what was once deemed a group of monsters is reborn in celebration.

LE SSERAFIM’s solidarity comes with no preconditions, no requirements. They don’t need to fully understand one another to join hands. “It’s kind of a crazy miracle that we even met in this world,” KAZUHA says in the album trailer “We walkin’ here,” “but that doesn’t mean we can share everything.” She goes about her everyday life with the rest of the group, going bowling, running errands, and grabbing a bite to eat. All the while, she’s facing down a monster alone—one the others can’t see. Even so, they throw punches at the empty air, fighting hard on her behalf. It looks like a meaningless gesture of support at first, but soon they find droplets of moisture cause the monster to melt away. Everyone has monsters to face—or has perhaps felt, at some point, like a monster, isolated from the world and misunderstood. But it doesn’t matter—they can still be together.

True to their name, LE SSERAFIM—an anagram of “I’m fearless”—once trained their focus on fearlessness, specifically of the self. They became “Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife” to break taboos under judgmental eyes, went “CRAZY” on everything they wanted, and recast the world’s relentless consumption of them as “SPAGHETTI” that’s “stuck between your teeth.” But now, having introduced the concept of FEARLESS 2.0, the group shifts the subject of “I’m fearless” from singular to plural. Even with the world turning away from them as always, there’s nothing to fear as long as they “hold scarred hands” together.

Ironically, “CELEBRATION,” with its festival-like energy, has uncertainty at its core. Distorted hardstyle kicks and repetition in the rhythm all conjures a celebratory atmosphere, but the cracks start to form where the melancholy minor-key melody clashes against it. The repeated line “time to celebrate” in a descending scale across the chorus lands almost like a declaration, and the choreography comes across as restrained, the group moving lockstep to the beat rather than loosely playing on the rhythm. The buoyancy of “CELEBRATION” feels less like a sensory rush than a cognitive declaration (“Congrats to the new me who took on uncertainty”). The idea carries to a video that came out later, “Just BOOMPALA,” when HUH YUNJIN asks, “Do you know how to stop thinking?” KIM CHAEWON’s answer is blunt. “Stop!” she says, followed by, “Want to go dance?” More than simply determination to overcome fear, it sounds like an invitation into a mindset where fear no longer has any hold over its victims. Echoing that, the choreography for “BOOMPALA” floods the song with a feather-light feeling of liberation with furtive mid-meditation glances, rhythmic snaps of the hips, and gestures that recall different forms of hands in prayer. An attitude of enlightenment runs the whole length of the song, drawing on concepts of emptiness and nothingness from the Heart Sutra with lyrics like “Nothing’s forever so nothing’s to fear.” After coming to a new realization in “CELEBRATION,” Frankenstein’s creature finally finds release in “BOOMPALA” from the loneliness and obsession that he never managed to escape previously.

“Beating up all inner drama / Saving the shame for mañana,” the lyrics continue, borrowing another word for “morning,” the backdrop to “BOOMPALA.” Monsters, ghosts, bugs—all the things we typically fear—usually come out at night. The Sun, by contrast, is typically considered the force that drives them away. “BOOMPALA” flips that cliché on its head. Things that were supposed to be in hiding no longer linger in the dark. LE SSERAFIM hoists them onto a parade float rigged with a massive sound system for all the world to see. And then they sing, “She’s only an illusion, don’t feed her.” In “BOOMPALA,” fear takes on a persona. It feels as though fear has substance, but it’s only an illusion, growing the more you feed it and fading the more you let go. In the music video, LE SSERAFIM sprays water all around as they dance to the music pouring out of their giant speakers, sending out waves of water and sound that drive away every illusion. As everyone shouts the nonce word “BOOMPALA,” their anguish evaporates and flowers begin to bloom.

On “Liminal Space,” the track that closes out “‘PUREFLOW’ pt.1,” the group’s having a conversation in the car—a space of passage where they’ve already left but not yet arrived. Near the end of their talk, SAKURA asks, “Where are we going?” There’s no answer to that question yet, but the road ahead of them is endless. So what if they’re monsters? Now, wherever they go, whatever form they take, they’re strong. Because they found each other inside their fear. Because they’re together.

“For we are not fearless, and therefore powerful.”