New album for the NeoFolk band Rome
2 min read
Considered one of the most important figures in the neofolk genre, Luxembourg’s Rome have spent the last thirteen years exploring and pushing their musical boundaries. The music unites American folklore with Chanson and the angst-ridden tristesse of English Post Punk – ‘Chanson Noir’, as leading man and sole permanent member Jerome Reuter, once called it. Looming above all this is his distinctive, deep voice. A voice you want to believe knows all about man’s true nature and purpose.
Part of a long tradition of lonesome guitar heroes, outcasts moving about restlessly, pursued by their dreams and demons, dedicated to a life beyond the pale. Reuter takes musical nods from Jacques Brel, Johnny Cash, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Michael Gira, Nick Cave – architects of melancholy like these have left their footprints in his artistic expression.
The protagonists of Rome’s lyrical world are history’s forgotten heroes and outsiders, most notably of the 20th century: Anarchist rebels (as on ‘Flowers From Exile’, 2009), the French resistance (‘Nos Chants Perdus’, 2010), Southern Africa’s struggle for freedom (‘A Passage To Rhodesia’, 2014) or revolutionaries and underground fighters such as those on Rome’s ambitious trilogy ‘Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit’ (2011) inspired by the works of Peter Weiss and Pablo Neruda among others.
This leads us to their thirteenth album; ‘Le Ceneri Di Heliodoro’.
On ’Le Ceneri Di Heliodoro’ (’The ashes of Heliodoro’), Reuter does not shy away from the provocative and ambiguous and thus tackles new terrain and touchy subject matters such as Europe’s dissolving unity, or its relations to the US and the fragile fraternity of its nations. The questions of continuity and identity have marked this decade of decline and have left an undeniable impression on Reuter’s work. But what will come of this mysterious Heliodoro – prophet or demon, saviour or slayer? Reuter leaves these – as most other questions – unanswered in this neofolk tour de force.
This thirteenth album, indeed, marks a return to the martial folk origins of the project and it is a grim and bleak picture Reuter is painting in these poignant folk songs. We are left with having but one choice: to try and find the necessary strength within ourselves, if we are to survive this turmoil. Thus, inevitably, the album is also an homage to Rome’s unique brand of outsiderdom.
We are left breathless. The city is alight in flames, delighting our eye in the beauty of its ruin. Uropia O Morte!
Source: www.rome.lu
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