Birth of Riot

Birth of Riot (MAVERICK, 7 October 2026) is Zilqy's first full-length album, following Vacant Throne, the five-track EP of 5 November 2025. The band are Anna (vocals), Toki (guitar), Miho (bass) and Kano (drums). Their own introduction to the record says the riot of the title is not one somebody else stirs up: it is the moment each listener begins to question how things are and takes a step of their own, and the album is meant as that beginning. The stated aim is heaviness that still reaches everyone, built from modern-metal riffs and breakdowns with synthesizers and hooks laid over them, a sound the band call post-melodic nu metal. Toki, Miho and Kano brought motifs and ideas to the writing, and Anna gave each song its world through the lyric and the vocal melody. Toshi-Fj and MACKY return as co-writers from the EP and rui (fade) joins them; the credits also name rejection on “From Zero to One” and Kaneko on “Caught in the Web”. Lance Prenc of Prenc Audio mixed and mastered the album, as he did the EP, and the sleeve is by the 3DCG artist Kyasya. Every lyric is Anna's, mostly in English, with a passage in Japanese in “RUN”. In an interview published by Rolling Stone Japan's website on 6 October 2026, Anna says the title was chosen with Japan's student movement and the upheavals of the 1960s and '70s in mind, and that it is not a call to violence but to let out feelings people keep pressed down. She wrote in the first half of 2026, a time she remembers for its anxiety about the state of the world. She describes “World's End” as a song about the new beginning that follows an end, “RUN” and “Misfit Toys” as songs for people who do not fit in, and “CAVEAT” as her unease with a society that puts efficiency and convenience first, and calls “Grotesque Noblesse” the darkest song on the record. Three songs went out in advance. “World's End”, released on 6 August and part of the live set since the band's first show in December 2025, reached number 19 on Kerrang!'s weekly new-music chart and was picked for Metal Hammer's Tracks Of The Week, the band report. “CAVEAT”, begun by Kano and the fastest song they have, followed on 29 August, and “RUN” arrived with its music video on 16 September. The album comes as a complete limited edition (DCCA-182) with an LP-size sleeve and a 24-page booklet, sold only through the MAVERICK STORE, and a standard edition (DCCA-183). The eight-date Birth of Riot tour runs from Kashiwa PALOOZA in Chiba on 11 October to Zepp Shinjuku (TOKYO) on 16 December.