Some concerts focus on performance — the sound, the dance, the spectacle. Others, like Lunar Theory, carry a deeper current. They’re about what lies beneath the music: meaning and story.

The title of the performance itself – Lunar Theory – is no accident. It refers to the long struggle scientists had to explain the Moon’s strange, unpredictable movements — its wobbles, pulls, and shifts. For centuries, the Moon’s path seemed chaotic, confusing. But eventually, those irregular patterns revealed a hidden order.

That’s ARTMS’ story too. They emerged from the ashes of LOONA — a 12-member girl group known for its ambitious creativity and devoted fans worldwide. After years of promise, LOONA fractured in 2023 amid company troubles and lineup changes, leaving fans with unfinished stories. ARTMS are what remains — still moving, still orbiting, still mysterious. Their show leans into this identity, weaving lunar symbols into a setlist that reclaims and reshapes their past.

The Troxy stage is sparse — no elaborate props, no immersive sets. Just a wide, clean canvas dominated by a massive screen, the main vehicle for narrative and mood. Visuals stretch across it with cinematic intensity; the lighting carries the emotional temperature. That minimalism forces you to focus on what’s real: choreography, expressions, and the synchronicity of members who’ve been through hell and returned with purpose.

After a symbolic opening clip of planets aligning and meteors crashing through space, the eight-song opening — solo and unit tracks from the earliest LOONA days — acts like a time capsule cracked open under moonlight. In order not just of performance but of memory, Act I retraces the arc of LOONA’s genesis, beginning with the songs that built the myth. Each track marks a distinct chapter, performed with renewed energy and layered emotion.

Heejin’s “ViViD” bursts open the show with its signature horn stabs and whimsical charm, instantly transporting fans to the experimental ambition of LOONA’s earliest days. The crowd responds with eager cheers, as if collectively acknowledging, ‘We’re here — and this is still ours.’ Haseul’s “Let Me In” follows, tender and operatic, carrying the hush of Iceland in its bones. Then “Sonatine” — a spectral duet from the 1/3 sub-unit, performed by Haseul and Heejin — evokes a time just out of reach, drawing some of the biggest cheers.

The solos continue chronologically: Kim Lip’s “Eclipse” (complete with a sleek new dance break that jolts the crowd), JinSoul’s “Singing in the Rain,” and Choerry’s psychedelic “Love Cherry Motion.” The progression shows not just individual identity, but LOONA’s then-expanding palette — from chamber pop to R&B to genre-blending fantasia.

Sung with fresh texture and edge, Act I feels like a manifesto: We were special then. And we still are.

After revisiting their earliest identities, the second act turns inward, focusing on fan favourites and B-sides that have grown more poignant with time. The drifting ballads “Dance On My Own” and “Universe” offer introspective pauses, offset by the sharp choreography and vibrant energy of “WOW,” “Satellite,” and “Star” — the latter LOONA’s closest brush with mainstream breakthrough, reaching the US Mainstream Top 40 in 2021, a milestone shared only with Blackpink’s “Ice Cream.” These songs serve as both tribute and testament; reminders of a promise just out of reach, yet still alive beneath ARTMS’s reinvention.

With nostalgia fully unearthed, the third act turns toward transformation — balancing LOONA’s iconic anthems (the industrial pop of “Butterfly,” the tribal-dance intensity of “PTT”) with fresh ARTMS tracks like “Virtual Angel” and “Sparkle.” It’s a careful blend of legacy and renewal, where familiar power meets emerging confidence.

The show’s emotional peak arrives just before “Burn.” A cinematic prelude video plays: five meteors crash through space, one by one. Then: “I find new blood.” Each member’s name flashes across the screen, now prefaced by ARTMS. Behind them, the Earth glows with colours from their LOONA eras, all under a waxing crescent moon.

This moon phase can’t be a coincidence. Often said to symbolize intention, growth, and the beginning of action – the first visible sliver of light after a reset – the waxing crescent is when seeds are planted. Dreams are shaped. What’s next begins to bloom.

“Burn” embodies this spirit. ARTMS’ first official release since their May 2024 debut album Dall and pre-release single for their upcoming Club Icarus mini-album, it has a deeper history. Teased over six years ago via a LOONA trailer, “Burn” was reportedly intended for LOONA’s 2020 mini-album but was scrapped following company turmoil. For years, it existed only as rumor, a relic of a group caught in corporate limbo.

Its live debut is all the more charged. “Burn” isn’t just a new era. It’s unfinished business. A reclamation of a future once denied.

Onstage, the members wear white outfits singed and charred at the hems — burn marks left from the crash, perhaps, or the cost of rising again. They are reborn, yes, but not unmarked.

ARTMS hit every move with precision, matching the sharpness of “Burn”’s funk-pop production. Every formation sends the crowd into a frenzy, fans chanting energetically along to hooks like “Let’s Get It Burn.” Placing this track at the show’s climax feels profound — it’s not just a finale, but a declaration of rebirth and defiance. After a journey through memory and reinvention, “Burn” is the blazing statement that ARTMS have not only survived but sharpened their edge.

The members laugh, take phones from fans to snap selfies, and wave like they’ve survived something — because they have. It’s a joyful acknowledgment of survival and renewal after the show’s emotional depth.

Cult classics like “favOriTe,” “Butterfly,” “Star,” and “PTT” return with their original choreographic scale, but they aren’t performed as carbon copies. Instead, they’re vocally restructured for five — parts redistributed, harmonies reimagined, lines once belonging to absent members now woven into new arrangements. The heartache in a smaller cast is undeniable, it has to be said, but there’s also a strange, striking power. The reworked vocals don’t erase the past but echo it, refracted through remaining voices. The audience — mostly long-time fans — sees resilience and reinvention, not loss. As they wave LOONA and ARTMS lightsticks in unison, they celebrate a group unwilling to abandon the blueprint that made them beloved, even as they redraw its lines.

Throughout, the fan energy is unwavering. There’s no lull, no dip in engagement. People sing, sob, shout. The fan costumes — split between LOONA nostalgia and ARTMS rebirth — don’t create division. They create contrast. They show how far these artists have come, and the ongoing impact their art has on their audience.

In between the setlist, documentary clips carry us deeper. Haseul and Heejin revisit MV locations — the snowy Icelandic expanse of “Let Me In,” the glowing cityscape of Paris from “ViViD.” “I remember when I came to Paris 8 years ago,” Heejin reflects at one point, as a reminder of the time that’s passed. Meanwhile, other clips show the members sweating it out in the dance room, practicing every routine with utmost precision. These clips anchor the show in memory, making it clear: this isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about reckoning.

ARTMS aren’t just performing tracks on stage — they’re telling a story that lives between the notes, in shadows and light. It’s a study in celestial mechanics: how something fractured can still hold orbit, how chaos becomes motion, and how old light takes new shape. Reducing it to song-by-song recap flattens the art and strips its mystery. That’s the difference with ARTMS — after all these years, their artistry still demands looking beyond the obvious.

Next up is Club Icarus, their mini-album landing on June 13. Another poetic title: Icarus flew too close to the sun, wings melting in hubris. But this story isn’t about failure — it’s about freedom. Icarus wanted more. Maybe ARTMS do too.

Where Lunar Theory is introspective, Club Icarus promises ascent. If LOONA was the galaxy — vast, dazzling, unreachable — ARTMS is the moon: luminous, wounded, tethered to Earth. Closer. Rougher. Real. Still turning in the dark, finding rhythm in ruin.

They may not be complete. But they are enough.