METAL HAS NO BORDERS

Today is October 7, 2025. For the past two years, Israel has amassed a long list of war crimes. If you somehow need convincing, there’s an entire Wikipedia page detailing indiscriminate bombings, forced evacuation, airstrikes on refugee camps, use of white phosphorus in attacks, targeting journalists, killing of surrendered people, sexual violence against detainees, blocking access to water, starvation, ceasefire violations, etc.

The entire world has seen video footage of 20-year-old Shaaban Al-Dalu burning alive after a Gaza refuge camp was hit by an Israeli missile strike. Our social media has shown multiple situations of fathers crying mercilessly, holding the decapitated remains of their children. Now, Gazans are suffering severe hunger-related deaths, with humanitarian aid blocked by Israeli. These atrocities have shook humanity on a global scale, but for Amir Yacoub, this is his first-hand reality.

Amir, born in Palestine, also goes by the pseudonym Zalim when fronting his solo black metal project Zalaam. I interviewed Zalaam in early 2024, and we spoke about creative perseverance while living in war and genocide his entire life. A lot has happened since that initial conversation.

Now catching up, Amir recalls the beginning: “I had a friend that got martyred within the first couple weeks of the genocide. I couldn’t stop weeping every night, but now I’ve reached a point where I can’t even weep anymore, and I envy those who tell me they weep every time they see a video of children slaughtered on camera. Life cannot go on like this; I honestly miss being depressed.”

When asked if he’s had any epiphanies over the past two years, the black metal vocalist / multi-instrumentalist has a lot on his mind: “I feel like the whole endeavor of this genocidal apartheid state is to really make the killing, and raping of helpless people, no more than a point of you. They want to tell the world, under some circumstances, it’s allowed, and even preferable when you kill and maim civilians. Their end goal is to create a nihilistic world, where killing is just part of the norm.”

“Gaza has it the worst right now, but we’re all in this nihilistic train together, if we don’t do anything.”

Amir calls attention to the global ramifications, referencing Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, a senior official of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, who was caught in a Vegas pedophile sting. Alexandrovich was investigated on suspicion of luring a minor by computer for sexual relations, yet was allowed to flee back to Israel – “There are Israeli pedophiles escaping punishments because they’re too powerful to be stopped.”

In late 2022, Zalaam released the “Zeitgeist of Lost Hopes” single, fusing black metal with a melodica. In July of 2023, Zalim started working on the next Zalaam album. “I made big progress in the first months. After the genocide begun, I barely had the energy to work on it. It’s going really slow, I expected to finish the work in 2024, now it’s 2025. I guess the inspirational mood and the energy level have to match, most of the time I get one without the other. At this point even I’ve recorded and deleted more stuff than what I kept,” Amir admits.

While we await the upcoming full-length Zalaam record, Zalim recently was involved in an experimental piece of music titled “Sidra,” sounding almost like Godflesh meets Mogwai. Amir elaborates, “This piece has already become very dear to me because it was a collaboration with an old and dear friend of mine, Adi, the man behind Mediteranos. I guess with this form of music, it’s so abstract it can be only symbolic and interpreted by the listener in every which way. Though, I could take the liberty for both of us and say, to us, Sidra symbolizes the beautiful children of Gaza, deriving from the Arabic word for the sacred Lote Tree at the end of the seventh heaven.”

“Our view of art is through the lens of experiences that seeks to reflect truths and answers, so our biggest challenge is to have the heart for it, all the rest is surface reality and chaos.”

For many years, I personally was an advocate and fan of the Israeli metal scene, but leading bands like Orphaned Land have approached this genocide too passively, calling for peace from both sides, while there’s far more blame and blood on the hands of Israel. Orphaned Land are being dangerously centrist and neutral during this genocide, where they should instead be using their voice and platform to call out their politicians and army who are committing atrocities.“Neutrality isn’t really neutrality, is it? I mean, are you trying to tell me that one can be neutral when dozens of complete families get massacred everyday? But what can you expect, when 82% percent of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from their land and 47% want to kill all Palestinians in Gaza (and that’s according to Haaretz),” Amir agrees.

When I brought up the countless pro-genocidal or fascist social media posts by Moti Daniel – the frontman of Israeli black metal group Arallu, Amir was not surprised: “However they try to spin it, they are settlers and they are expressing their settler mentality.”

While not directly related to Israel or Palestine, Zalaam have also removed their music from Spotify in protest of CEO Daniel Ek, who has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in AI-assisted weaponry. Amir clarifies, “I don’t have to or need to know a lot about it honestly; all I need to know is that it contradicts with the morals and aspirations of a world I want to live in. I’m happy that many artists are removing their music from the platform. It started with not so big names removing their music from there, and now we hear of big names here and there that decided to take down their music because of that reason.”

While numb and nihilistic, Amir still holds some form of optimism: “I’m thankful that Gaza sort of divided the world between two camps, those who support the rights of human beings to life, equality and freedom… etc. and racists. Of course the majority of the world is with Gaza, but the power right now isn’t.”

“With that being said, we have a fighting chance, so, let’s fight it. We can cause apartheid systems to fall. We did it before.”