Zalaam – Nocturnal Luster

(Performed by Zalaam, 2020)

This album by Palestinian artist known simply as Zalaam, is an epic and gut-wrenching, promising to take you out of your comfort zone and force you to reckon with the historic and ongoing genocidal decimation of the inhabitants of Filastin. The album commences with a wearied, lamentful acoustic start before throwing the switch into pummel mode, where an onslaught of heavily-sludged electric guitars and earth-shattering percussion ushers in Zalaam’s tenacious and throaty vocal javelins. Some notes soar, while others decay, falling to fester in the mires of rage — where the sad notes are defiantly inflected with hope and righteous indignation; a tension so begging for release, that we are left to find ourselves in the pieces left in its wake. This is the sound of dismal and dire consequences, the shriek of crying mothers and orphaned children; of humanity’s assault on itself; of lionhearted courage and resistance and unending resilience; of fighting the forces of mal intent with dedicated lethal force; the staccato of machine-gun fire in broad daylight, the sound of a humvee drive through a war-torn sandstorm at 3am.  This is the sound of fucking revolution.