v When drummer Yotam Haim went missing from his home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, his band Persephore were riding a wave of success. Their biggest gig yet was scheduled to take place in Tel Aviv that Saturday, but they never made it.
As news came through of trouble in the south, the band messaged their drummer on their WhatsApp chat group, and Yotam relayed that he could hear rockets from his safe room. He told them: “After the rockets are done I’ll take my car and go out.”
“At first we thought it was just rockets from Hamas, because in Israel that is normal life,” Persephore’s guitarist Lidor Kalai says from Tel Aviv.
“But then he got a message that there were terrorists in the kibbutz. He told us he could hear gunshots, and that there was a terrorist in his house and they were burning down his house.”
At 10.40am, the connection was cut off. It was over a week before they found out that he had been taken to Gaza as a hostage.
“We know what these monsters do,” says Lidor. “So at first I had two options in my mind: he got kidnapped or they killed him.”
In mid-December, 28-year-old Yotam was accidentally killed by IDF troops in Gaza City’s Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, having escaped with two fellow hostages and made a white flag bearing the words, in Hebrew, “Help, hostage”.
Lidor, 22, says he has lots of thoughts about this that are hard to express, but he stresses that he harbours no blame. “I was in shock – it was that tragic. The IDF is trying for almost four months to get the hostages back and I’m not blaming the soldiers because every step Hamas try to kill them.”
Persephore’s last band meeting took place on 6 October, and they were in a great place, in the middle of writing new songs and preparing for shows such as their thwarted slot at Israel’s biggest metal festival, Psycho Ward, on the 7th. “It was our best time,” says Lidor. “And Yotam especially was really excited because we really prepared for this.”
Lidor says of Yotam, who joined the band in 2022: “He didn’t play the drum parts that our other drummer had before. Every song we wrote, he wrote his own parts, and it sounded way better. We loved that he brought something so original.”
This originality is confirmed by one of Israel’s leading metal music producers, Tamir Hausmann, who put on the band’s last show in August at the Shevrolet Club in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Tamir had met the band before and was keen to bring them to the club.
“They had a really unique sound that I didn’t hear before,” says Tamir, who has worked with countless metal acts. “Not too many metal bands in Israel have a sound that emotional, with emo or post-metal vibes.”
Even the purple tie-dye T-shirts among their merchandise were unusual for a heavy scene that favours black. Following a thrash band that night, their set was a shock for the audience who weren’t expecting to hear something that nuanced and emotional.
“In my 12 years’ experience as a metal producer, I’ve never seen a show like that before that,” recalls Tamir. “It was really amazing.”
The metal scene is a small one in Israel, offering limited opportunities, but Yotam had set high aspirations for the band. His elder brother Tuval is a famous drummer who plays for Israeli Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai, and Yotam was preparing for similar success.
“He really thought that would eventually happen,” says Lidor. “He had big ambitions for the band. Yotam opened our eyes.” He assured his bandmates that eventually they would play Wacken Open Air in Germany, the biggest metal festival in the world.
When Tamir and Lidor describe Yotam, the words “kind” and “sensitive” crop up repeatedly. But above all, Tamir was struck by Yotam’s musical talent on stage, when all that modesty dissipated in a flurry of fervent drumming. “He immersed himself in the drums. He was really with the beat and with the music. Some drummers can be technical and dry, but he was super energetic. And when they came to the quieter parts, he knew how to take it down a notch. It was amazing.”
Tamir knew that night that this was a band with great potential. “They have the capabilities, the talent and they’re not just the average metal band.”
Like the rest of the band, Tamir was “devastated” to learn of Yotam’s death. He talked to Yosi the day of the distressing news, and the pair wept on the phone. “He was so sensitive and such a unique person,” says Tamir quietly.
At Yotam’s funeral near the Gaza Strip, 500 metal heads, both fans and friends, gathered to pay their respect and hear songs played in tribute to the drummer, including Netta Barzilai performing Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters. The remaining members of Persephore also played.
“They were talking sensitively and it was really, really sad,” Tamir recalls. “While listening to them, I understood how deep the relationship was.”
And now, as a tribute to their friend, Lidor and Yosi are writing an album in his memory that they hope to release this summer. As a band they agreed that the entire album, from the lyrics to the notes, should be written “for Yotam”.
At the end of February, they will release a song all about their bandmate and how much they miss him. In it, there will be none of their usual brash guitars or drumming; this electronic track, featuring just Yosi’s vocals, will stand strikingly apart from their usual music. “It’s very emotional,” says Lidor. “Every time I hear it, I want to cry. It gives you the feeling of what you want to feel.”
Being together as a band through the tragedy has been a source of consolation for the grieving musicians. “We said that we will continue and not let this tragedy stop us,” says Lidor. “We know that Yotam would want us to continue as a band.”
Lidor is in touch with Yotam’s family, who are supportive of their plans to write music about him.
It is bittersweet that the band are receiving more attention than ever before. Their single Creation, which had 1,000 plays on Spotify prior to October 7, has 26,500 streams at time of writing.
Just before we part, Lidor has one more thing to add: “It’s not about the band,” he says, his voice steely. “But I want all those hostages to come back. That’s it.”
