Dongker Dig Into Deep-Rooted Sadness on ‘Melankolia Radikal’

By Ben Liew  •  04 Sep 2026 in Features

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The Bandung punk trio turn personal disappointment, collective frustration, and the strange weight of being young into an 11-track album that refuses to keep sadness neatly contained.

There is a particular kind of sadness that doesn’t simply pass.

It lingers. It settles into relationships, families, cities, and the way we look at the world around us. Sometimes it is personal, sometimes political, and often, as Dongker suggests on their sophomore album Melankolia Radikal, it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Released on 28 August 2026, the new record finds the Bandung punk band digging into what they describe as “deep-rooted sadness”, turning an emotion that is often treated as something to overcome into something worth examining.

The album’s starting point was the reality of young people living through a particularly noisy moment, where disappointment, anxiety, and anger can feel both deeply personal and strangely universal.

For Dongker, that idea is baked into the title itself. Melankolia comes from the Greek melancholia, historically associated with a gloomy state of mind, while radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Put together, the band sees the phrase as a way of describing sadness that doesn’t merely visit, but takes root.

When Personal Gets Political

And this isn’t sadness confined to the interior world.

On Melankolia Radikal, the emotional terrain stretches from human relationships and family to the environment, the state, and the larger forces that shape everyday life. Dongker’s argument is that these things are not necessarily separate. Personal frustration can exist alongside collective disappointment, and sometimes the two feed into each other.

“When a group of people are placed under the same conditions, there is an opportunity for a feeling to grow together, to be experienced and felt collectively. Melankolia Radikal is a collection of sadness, disappointment, and anger that I feel has recently been experienced collectively by the people, as a reaction to the space that encompasses them, which is the state,” said Dzikrie J. Arethusa, Dongker’s drummer.

That collective dimension gives the album its political edge without reducing it to a straightforward protest record. The band are interested in the messier territory where private lives collide with the world outside them.

Arno Zarror, Dongker’s vocalist and guitarist, puts it even more simply: “[Sadness] is a feeling that we sometimes do not want, but sometimes need. Because the most honest emotions sometimes come out when we are sad. The reality today is that many people are sad but hide it. It seems that, throughout the process, this album has taught us a lot about ways of surviving”.

That sense of survival runs through the record’s 11 songs, which form an emotional landscape shaped by disappointment, confusion, lost direction, and the ongoing attempt to make sense of life as a young person.

Built Under Bridges

The world of Melankolia Radikal was already being built before the record officially arrived.

Dongker first introduced the album through the showcase ‘Melankolia di Kolong’, held at Taman Skateboard beneath Bandung’s Prof. Dr. Mochtar Kusumaatmadja (Pasupati) Flyover. Staying close to their DIY roots, they later performed beneath a bridge in Yogyakarta for 4,000 people, unveiling the album artwork at the end of the performance.

There’s something fitting about an album concerned with the things that take root beneath the surface emerging from spaces that exist outside the usual concert infrastructure.

The band formed in 2019 among students from the Faculty of Art and Design at Institut Teknologi Bandung, and that background in visual arts has remained inseparable from their approach to music.

Eleven Ways To Sit With It

The record unfolds across 11 tracks, moving through its own collection of sadness, frustration, and reflection.

Tracklist

1. Selamat Malam Tuhan
2. Kukubur Trauma
3. Metafora Berpelukan
4. Takbir Terdengar Kejam
5. Nir Imajinasi feat. Cholil Mahmud
6. Nyaris Sempurna, Sedikit Cacat
7. Kisah Sedih Kontemporer (Focus Track)
8. Lautan Bunga Berwarna Terang
9. Penyesalan > Kelahiran
10. Lamunan Ringan di Singapura feat. Banda Neira
11. Lagu Selepas Hujan

The album’s universe is also expanded by a pair of collaborators. Cholil Mahmud of Efek Rumah Kaca appears on ‘Nir Imajinasi’, while Banda Neira join Dongker on ‘Lamunan Ringan di Singapura’, bringing additional voices into the record’s emotional landscape.

A Punk Record With A Visual Language

Music isn’t the only way Dongker tells this story.

The album artwork is an interpretation of Agan Harahap’s I Was Punk Before You, which features a close-up photograph of Joko Widodo dressed in a punk style. Dongker’s new mascot, Dollar, also makes its debut as part of the album’s wider visual narrative.

The mascot’s name isn’t a reference to currency. Instead, Dollar represents another interpretation of sadness and appears across various forms, including action figures, puppet costumes, and keychains.

For vocalist-guitarist Delpi Suhariyanto, the artwork reflects a reality increasingly blurred by the sheer volume of information and influence surrounding us.

“Today, our reality is blurred by various things: the internet, AI, information restricted by officials, and stupid appeals from public officials. We feel that our cover art can capture this phenomenon,” explained Delpi about the artwork for Melankolia Radikal.

It’s an appropriately chaotic visual statement for an album interested in chaos of another kind: the accumulation of frustrations that can become difficult to separate from one another.

No Easy Answers

Beneath the punk energy, visual language, and political frustration sits something more intimate.

Dongker aren’t presenting sadness as a weakness or a temporary glitch in the system. They’re looking at what happens when it sticks around long enough to become part of how people understand themselves and their surroundings.

Their conclusion is blunt. “We feel the same disgust and madness within our personal spaces. Broken households, relationships that never worked out, taxes that have fallen apart. Maybe this is not a perfect summary, but Melankolia Radikal was created with full awareness as Indonesian citizens who feel that the state has failed to stand alongside its people,” concluded Delpi.

After building their name through milestones such as 2024’s Ceriwis Necis and the 2025 collaboration with Jason Ranti, I Don’t Know and I Dongker, Dongker arrive at Melankolia Radikal with a larger canvas.

Their punk still comes with raw energy, but here it is tied to something more expansive: an attempt to make sense of the sadness that exists between the personal and the collective.

Sometimes the most honest way forward is to first figure out what, exactly, has taken root. Melankolia Radikal is Dongker digging into that soil.

Dongker will be playing at Petai Belalang, KL on 20 September 2026.

In addition, the band will be making stops at MANDIRI (for an acoustic set), Ruas Store in Penang, and Pedro in Ipoh, and Bangunan Melaka in Melaka.

 

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