BTS shouldn’t need to be anything but good-looking. Convention, mostly regressive, says that boy bands are loved exclusively by young girls, are commercial entities designed to sell tickets and T-shirts, and that aesthetics trample on any kind of substance.

But BTS, the leading K-pop music act and the first to cross over to Western pop-culture ubiquity, always wanted more. Formed by songwriter and producer Bang Si-hyuk, the band was born out of frustration with the unspoken rules of K-pop, which traditionally stressed military-like choreography, visual perfection and gloss.

Many of BTS’s strongest lyrics, however, are rooted in feelings of insecurity, anxiety and peer pressure. Such anguish has underpinned much of their material over the years, and continues to fuel their fanbase. In a rare balancing act for such a lucrative enterprise, BTS still have the sincerity of everyday people. Their new album, Map of the Soul: 7, released today, looks set to propel them only further.

Within minutes of the album’s release this morning, ARMY (the collective name for the group’s fandom) had already begun dissecting its messaging, along with the visuals of the new video for single On. A face tattoo sported by band member V, that reads “The Shadow Like Me”, continues a familiar BTS theme of finding temporary safety in darkness. The song 00:00 (Zero O’Clock), on the other hand, has been interpreted as a kind of emotional reset for the group, reflective of turning a page and putting past trauma to bed.

By appearing to dangle over a dark abyss in one “concept photo”, meanwhile, some fans have speculated that the band are confronting the perils of temptation. Another photo, which shows the group enjoying a Last Supper-style feast, could symbolise decadence or a temporary space between Heaven and Hell. Other theories have involved quoting the surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire, or referencing art by Anish Kapoor.