Two years from the first rehearsal to a record about beginning again, and Maledictus have their debut album Lazarvs out through Fireflash Records, with a video for "Crypt of Dreams".
The band say the song was one of the first they ever wrote and that it confronts the darkest feelings on the record: "It is about dealing with guilt and resentment when dreams fall apart." In their account, pride, shame and denial keep a person from accepting what happened, and the blame goes to a curse or to circumstances rather than to themselves, which they know is an excuse. The song ends on a call to break that by facing the truth, and the band tie it to the album's own theme of confronting the past.
The video is built out of their own footage from the two years since they formed rather than a staged shoot. "This album carries everything we have poured into Maledictus: our struggles, our convictions and our determination to create a new beginning," they said on the release.
Maledictus formed in Lisbon in 2024 out of players looking for a heavier and more expressive sound, and guitarist Ben Stockwell puts it as processing life with a sense of dark melancholy. Rez sings, Stockwell and Josh Riot play guitar, Butch Cid plays bass and Peter Crushes drums. The record is out on CD and vinyl as well as streaming.
Four singles came out of it before the album itself, the fourth of them in October.