Release Date September 4th, 2026
Format CD/Digital
Genre Metalcore
Origin Indonesia
Ezalor formed in Jakarta, Indonesia in early 2025 to play edgemetal the old way. The band grew up on Prayer For Cleansing, Undying, Sentence and Drawing Last Breath. Their debut EP "Condemned By Faith" came out that summer and paired savage aggression with strong melodic undercurrents. In 2026 the band came back with the seven track "Verses Beneath A Dying Sky", which takes the melodic side further and puts more thought into the songwriting. Tribunal Records signed them as the label's first Southeast Asian band.
The CD is limited to 300 copies. It packs the seven new tracks together with the whole "Condemned By Faith" EP, twelve tracks in all at a little under forty minutes, and comes with a twelve page booklet that holds every lyric. The words circle around grief, exile, blood oaths and wounded devotion. They lean hard on the martyr imagery this style has always worn on its sleeve and get earnest to the edge of melodrama, which is what edgemetal has always been about.
The production is fat and warm at the low end, the snare cracks with an organic ring, and the vocal sits on top of everything, screamed so raw that the man sounds like he's losing his voice by the second track. "Last Witness (Unhealed)" and "Requiem For The Unchosen" let the melodic side step forward, with harmonized leads riding over mosh parts in true Undying fashion. "Of Endings And Devotion" stretches past five minutes on a slow, mournful build that pays off with a crushing final breakdown. The drummer swings hard through the hardcore sections, and the guitar tone stays hot and saturated all the way through.
The blueprint is borrowed and it shows. Several breakdowns land right where anyone raised on turn of the millennium edgemetal would predict, and Ezalor's own stamp is thinner than the aggression behind it. The five "Condemned By Faith" tracks at the back are rawer and blunter, with "Sworn In Blood" and "Broken Wings" sounding like a younger band finding its legs. Even so, the disc runs as one long bruise with no dead spots. It's heartfelt and heavy, short on surprises and long on sincerity, from a band worth watching.
|7.5
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