ROME - Beneath the Ashes of Europe

Over time, Jérôme Reuter's prolific discography, released under the name Rome, has taken the shape of a complex existential and poetic journey of rare beauty and depth, an intellectual bulwark standing on the ruins of the modern world, ideally picking up the baton from bands like Death In June and Sol Invictus, while at the same time charting his own course toward an evocative, songwriter-driven neofolk.

Since the early 2000s, Reuter has perfectly captured the sense of deep crisis running through the European continent, his work also retracing the darkest sides of 20th-century history. The Luxembourgish artist has always avoided offering easy answers, believing his task is essentially to raise questions and provoke reactions, bringing out contradictions and the shadowy sides of modernity, even under the dim light of our present reality. Not everything needs to be brought into the light, as he himself stated in our interview (and more recently in the one given to the Swedish magazine Bardo Methodology). It therefore takes attention to enter the world staged by Rome, a kind of journey to the end of the night woven from historical and literary suggestions.

The martial-folk dawn under the aegis of Cold Meat Industry

It all begins in Sweden with Cold Meat Industry, the seminal label run by Roger Karmanik. From the late Eighties onward, the Swedish label revolutionized the world of (post-)industrial music, giving rise to new branches and subgenres: from the dungeon synth of Mortiis to the death industrial of Brighter Death Now, by way of the neoclassicism of Arcana and the dark-ambient of Raison d'être, not to mention the black-industrial of Mz.412. It was 2006 when Reuter, under the pseudonym Rome (the name is simply short for Jérôme), released the Ep Berlin for the Swedish label.

Starting from a martial/neofolk sound indebted to bands like Death in June, Der Blutharsch, labelmates Puissance and the early Dernière Volonté, Reuter builds a theatre of bygone times through a cut-up of period samples and slow slides into a heavy, enveloping vocal delivery. Tracks like “Like Lovers” and “The Orchards” hit the mark thanks to the artist's distinctive vocal timbre, as well as the extreme care given to content and atmosphere. Right from the start, Rome lays out a clearly recognizable stylistic signature, striking a fine balance between a stern industrial attitude (“Cloacks” and “Wake”) and a leaden lyrical intimacy (“Herbstzeitlose”). From the very sample on “Like Lovers”, where a voice declares with firm conviction: “Compromise is not possible”, one is irreversibly won over by Rome's bold, uncompromising vision.

The first album released under the Rome name wasn't long in coming. On the back of the success of Berlin (among fans of this kind of sound, that is), Nera came out that same year. Indeed, the mood here is, just like on the Ep, pitch black. The epigraph printed inside the original digipack of the album reads, in Italian, “A noi è mancata soltanto la fortuna non il coraggio” [“We lacked only luck, not courage”]. The same line also appears in an Italian sample (a voice with an Emilia-Romagna accent) featured in the track “A La Faveur De La Nuit”, a bleak piano ballad about defeat and daring.

The whole album seems to revolve around the tragic events of the Second World War, complete with air-raid sirens heard on “A Burden Of Flowers” and dogs barking in the wake of a patrol of soldiers on “A La Faveur De La Nuit”. On “Hope Dies Painless” one can hear echoes of the apocalyptic folk of Death In June.

Overall, Nera blends folk ballads with industrial symphonies in the vein of Der Blutharsch, topping it all off with vocals that nod to Nick Cave and Scott Walker. It's precisely Reuter's voice that lends that melancholic, dark touch in which a strong and justified pessimism about humanity's fate emerges, set against a twentieth-century martial emphasis that evokes old black-and-white documentaries and a Europe that no longer exists, buried beneath the rubble and dust of History.

Confessions d'un Voleur d'Ames, the second album, released by Cold Meat Industry in 2007, stands out clearly for the elegance of its songwriting, haunted by the ghost of the most passionate darkwave and smudged with industrial fumes. Smart enough to use the genre's most well-worn stereotypes with the right amount of detachment, Jerome's “confessions” are calibrated with great maturity and good taste, carried along by a sincere and palpable emotional charge, never tipping into pomposity, not even when, bowing to the clichés of his own style, he fills the songs with epic, majestic voices and orchestral samples, as on the splendid intro “Ni Dieu Ni Maitre”, worthy of the old Puissance.

And if "The Consolation Of Man" is a cautious opening salvo, steeped in the hazier side of neofolk, songs like the extraordinary "Querkraft", "Der Wolfsmantel" and "The Joys Of Stealth" convey all the melancholy and (dis)enchantment needed to give birth to their rare, astonishing beauty. They remain unforgettable from the very first listen. Also worth noting are "This Twisted Crown", the spectral, hypnotic folk of "The Torture Detachment" and the visionary closer "L'Adieu Aux Anciencs", staged with nothing more than a hallucinated whisper and scattered piano notes as backdrop.

Masse Mensch Material is the third album, recorded in the space of just eighteen months. Here Rome stages a limbo where past and present intertwine and mirror one another; from that vantage point the artist observes the choices, passions, illusions and defeats of a humanity at the crossroads, today as yesterday. He takes part at times reluctantly, at times with passion and emotion; then pulls away, sullen, retreating back into his cocoon. "Die Nelke" and "Neue Erinnerung" are the dazzling new jewels around which the record revolves; starting from the "usual" neofolk chords, guided by an ever deeper and more expressive voice, these songs rise along ascending paths that, especially in their epic, despondent refrains, brush against peaks of unheard-of beauty.

In "Die Nelke" there's also an evocative sample in Italian that goes “Guarda come questi tempi sono pesanti/ Bisogna rimanere attenti/ Bisogna aspettare/ Di nascosto sempre migliorarsi”, but run fast, Jérôme, don't waste time looking back, don't seek compromises, solitary and impenetrable: the desperate anxiety that pervades "Wir Gotter Der Stadt" seems to wrestle with itself, and makes for another standout moment on the album.

Rome's strength now lies more than ever in the universal power of verse and chorus, feeding here on abrupt, risky contrasts: the sarcastic carousel of "Die Brandstifter" (surely "Paris Spleen", the last album released on Cold Meat Industry by our intrepid Ataraxia, didn't go unnoticed) finds its opposite and complementary alter ego in the icy requiem "Wir Moorsoldaten", a model of formal rigor. The dark sensibility weighing down the murky "Kriegsgotter" finds a way to light up in the aching singer-songwriter mode of "Der Erscheinungen Flucht". And right from the opening, the violent cut between the soft ambient gusts of "Sonnengotter" and the turmoil of "Der Brandtaucher" makes an impact. Yet each of the album's many souls finds its ideal fulfillment within the whole, leaving some room for further improvement in a formula that manages to express itself effectively, in a test of maturity passed with flying colors, pride, intelligence and balance.

After the first three albums for Cold Meat Industry, a new phase opens with Flowers From Exile, released in 2009. The album marks the move to the German label Trisol and the official expansion of the live line-up. What began as Reuter's solo project is now a varied trio that, alongside the songwriter, includes multi-instrumentalist Patrick Damiani and violinist Nikos Mavridis.

The album is a work of intense, desolate intimacy, which chooses the Spanish Civil War as its metaphorical backdrop, focusing on the diaries, memories and longings of those forced into exile by the conflict, captured during their sea voyages in search of a new life in a foreign land. And, true to the project's guiding philosophy, the old-style disguise actually conceals resigned reflections on current affairs.

Even when lyrical and epic as per custom ("Legacy Of Unrest"), Rome builds on his folk and pop souls as indestructible foundations, erecting songs that almost entirely shed the industrial jaggedness and a certain martial pomposity of previous works, which could make listening tough going for those not already won over by the grey-area scene. This is a more song-based, melodic work, inspired more by the art of Leonard Cohen (just listen to the title track to be convinced) than by Death In June.

And while duly paying tribute to his guiding lights, Rome's art grows ever more recognizable: Jérôme's warm, charismatic voice, the engaging arrangements, the vivid ache of melodies that sweep you away on first listen, in the disarming sweetness of "Odessa" and "Who Fell In Love With The Sea", in the momentum of "The Accidents Of Gesture", which gains more drive and confidence the further it drifts from dry land, even allowing itself gusts of shoegaze.

The album soon becomes one of Rome's most beloved and best-known works, so much so that, to mark its tenth anniversary in 2019, it was performed in full live during Wave of Darkness on the Baltic Sea, an event devoted to post-industrial, neofolk and martial sounds, held aboard a cruise ship crossing the Baltic from Stockholm to Riga and back. Several historic Cold Meat Industry artists also took part in the event, bringing back into play much of the sound and aesthetic from which the Rome project was born and took its first steps.

2010's Nos Chants Perdus continues along the path laid out by the previous album, but it's also a more melancholic and pessimistic work, in which voice and acoustic guitar take center stage in a vision that's more minimal and diaphanous compared to past records. Spain is abandoned in favor of the France of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Camus and Apollinaire. The album is set, for the most part, during the years of the German occupation of France, though the lyrics also draw together literary echoes from different periods of French history. "Les deraciné" (The Uprooted) is a track that, from its title alone, recalls a famous book by the French nationalist writer Maurice Barrès. Rome wins the listener over with his chansonnier soul in the vein of Jacques Brel, but this is a less immediate work than its predecessors, almost isolationist, sung in a tone that recalls the darkest Scott Walker.

Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit began life as a triple CD containing a grand total of thirty-six tracks; a undeniably imposing work, released in 2011 and also inspired by Peter Weiss's novel "The Aesthetics of Resistance". From the title itself (literally "The Aesthetics of Freedom from Domination", but also "The Aesthetics of Autonomy", "The Aesthetics of Anarchy"), the trilogy deals precisely with the theme of revolt across the most varied socio-cultural contexts.

Across the three chapters ("Aufbruch Or A Cross of Wheat", "Aufruhr Or A Cross Of Fire" and "Aufgabe Or A Cross Of Flowers"), Jérôme, aided by Patrick Damiani, surveys martial industrial and acoustic neofolk, but also singer-songwriter dark-ballads and spoken-word pieces recited over ambient soundscapes.

The overall quality of the trilogy is undoubtedly above the genre's average (there's no shortage of fine tracks), but the whole suffers from a certain long-windedness - the numerous spoken-word passages, however evocative and functional to the concept, tend to weigh the work down, and not all the tracks benefited equally from the Luxembourg artist's talent, making the work as a whole less successful than its predecessors.

Hell Money came out in 2012 and is essentially a concept album about the evils caused by money: the task of analyzing and dissecting the theme falls to the record's more energetic passages, like the crackling "Amsterdam, The Clearing" and the merciless "Golden Boy", laced with exotic sounds, African chants and the odd nod back to the style of Rome's earliest era.

The new Rome-sound finds its peaks instead in the cascade of tears that is "Tightrope Walker (Wild Milk)" – among the most beautiful songs ever written by the Luxembourger – in the attack on the powers-that-be of "Fester", and in the Cohen-esque lullaby of "Rough Magic", where sweetness entirely replaces darkness. But the dominant feeling across the whole record is a resigned melancholy, the undisputed protagonist of the tribute (already clear from the title) to 4AD on "This Silver Coil", of the languid "Silverstream", of the piano sonata "Red-Bait" and of the bittersweet, touching finale of "The Demon Me (Come Clean)".

The strength of the album, even compared to the previous chapters of Rome's long saga, lies in its ability to speak to the listener with no intermediaries. Rather than dwelling on the meticulous care of arrangements and atmospheres, Reuter focuses on the poetic, intimate side of his music without resorting to any artifice, relying solely on a compositional sensibility worthy of the finest songwriters.

From Rhodesia to Vietnam, a walk among the ghosts of History

In 2014 comes A Passage To Rhodesia. After the introspective, singer-songwriter deep dive of the previous album, Reuter brings his narrative back to war-torn territories, this time tackling the conflict that took place in Rhodesia between 1964 and 1979, the so-called "Bush War". Rhodesia was a state – recognised internationally by only a handful of countries – that declared itself independent in 1965, in an attempt to escape the universal suffrage that other former British colonies were adopting at the time. Such a decision sparked, in an already highly tense context, clashes between the "white" government forces (which nonetheless included a sizeable number of black soldiers) and two communist/Marxist-leaning armed groups: Robert Mugabe's ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) and Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army).

Today you only need to look at a map of Africa to see that, where Rhodesia once stood, there is now Zimbabwe: the victory of the liberation forces led, after a brief transition, to the creation of the new state, under the iron fist of Mugabe, the bloodthirsty dictator of the unfortunate African country, who died only in 2019. But that, precisely, is another story: in this work Rome instead focuses on the epic of the defeated, namely the descendants of the European colonists, in a concept album that – aided by its "special" edition – takes on the shape of a full-blown multimedia trip down memory lane. A boxset printed in 1000 copies, containing two CDs, a 10", a poster, postcards of Rhodesia, etc.

The album is a choral fresco told through multiple voices, a bipolar "free indirect discourse" full of period recordings that appear like ghosts ("Hate Us And See If We Mind"), in which his martial folk embodies the voice of Rhodesian fanaticism ("One Fire" and "Hate Us and See If We Mind"), while his more singer-songwriter side works as the voice of the conscience of a people admitting the defeat of a desperate cause. "The Ballad Of The Red Flame Lily" is emblematic in this regard: a beautiful, melancholy ballad in which the musician, as is his habit, gives voice to the veterans of war, to History's defeated. We walk among the failures of men, through a jungle now ablaze, while repeating to ourselves "And it will shame us now (It was wrong)". All of this unfolds, as ever, under a markedly intimate mood; even though – a latter-day Salgari – the Luxembourg artist sings of lands he has never actually lived in.

While "One Fire", one of the record's most riveting tracks, asserts the grim rush towards battle – "one fire fights one fire" – "The River Eternal" instead offers a delicate spoken-word piece over dark strings, showing us the harsh reality of a nightmarish war, a conflict that has destroyed and divided the country and that seems never to end: “Into the glowing darkness/ We travel the shining black serpent/ That plugs us straight into the heart of this nightmare/ At the end of this river is the end of this war”. In this track Reuter seems to directly evoke certain pages of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".

Alongside Flowers From Exile, A Passage To Rhodesia remains one of Rome's finest and most significant works.

The mini-album Coriolan, released on 26 April 2016, is dedicated to the story of the general Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, complete with all the relevant literary and musical references, ranging from William Shakespeare's tragedy, written between 1605 and 1608, to Ludwig van Beethoven's celebrated 1807 composition for Collin's 1804 tragedy. Here Reuter revisits the controversial figure of Coriolanus mainly through the lens of Léo Ferré, the anarchist singer-songwriter, poet and writer whose influence had also been significant on Flowers From Exile.

Caius Marcius, nicknamed Coriolanus after his courageous victory over the Volsci, is the archetypal figure one would expect to find on a Reuter record: a hero and statesman unwilling to compromise, unjustly branded a traitor and enemy of Rome, against which he will wage war before abandoning his plans for revenge in order to save the city.

The record opens with the martial epic of "Investiture", followed by the dark spoken-word piece set against the post-industrial backdrop of "Make You A Sword Of Me", before closing with the leaden "Funeratio", which celebrates the defeat of ambition on the pyre of sacrifice for the common good. Also on the theme of war, we find the beautiful "Der Krieg", the first Rome song to be sung entirely in German, whose lyrics seem to speak of a reality not so far removed from our own present: "Zaun und mauer und letztlich nach krieg – der völker grausamstes spiel" ("Fence and wall and finally towards war – the cruellest game of peoples").

Musically, the record offers no particular departures in style or composition, featuring excellent, sharply evocative tracks such as "Broken" and the atmospheric "This Light Shall Undress All", while a piece like "Fragments" brings out sounds more akin to post-punk than neofolk.

Released on 26 August 2016 via Trisol, The Hyperion Machine shows Reuter growing ever more skilled at ranging across history and literature, in this case drawing on Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Paul Celan of "Todesfuge".

The record continues the more singer-songwriter-oriented phase of Rome (with Jacques Brel and Léo Ferré as guiding spirits) that began in 2009 with Flowers From Exile, though this latest work is not without epic martial moments reminiscent of his early, brilliant albums. It's no coincidence that, in September 2016, Trisol reissued his 2006 debut EP on vinyl, as if closing a circle on a body of work that has shown, over the years, an enviable sense of development and coherence.

The album draws into its orbit Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion: a "gentle machine" that feeds on romantic, ghostly visions. Listening to the Leonard Cohen-esque ballad "Celine In Jerusalem", as if in a morphine-induced hallucination, we picture the French writer, a war veteran, sadly wandering through the ruins of Jerusalem. Paul Celan, in flight and writing in German, his mother tongue, is the subject of the record's most compelling track, "The Secret Germany (For Paul Celan)", a perfect piece of post-industrial neofolk that musically transports us back to the days of "Masse Mensch Material", as likewise happens in the dark finale of the track "Adamas".

The persecuted of every land, history's veterans and the defeated have always been at the core of Reuter's interests; it's no coincidence that, after the tribute to Celan, comes "Die Mörder Mühsams," a stunning yet terrifying track in German dedicated to the death of the anarchist Erich Mühsam.

The work also features a collaboration with Swedish artist Joakim Thåström (Imperiet, Peace, Love and Pitbulls), whose deep voice serves as a counterpoint to Reuter's on "Stillwell." Also included is a cover of one of Thåström's most famous songs, "FanFanFan," presented here as a bonus track.

The Hyperion Machine confirms itself as another important milestone in the artistic evolution of the Luxembourg musician, ever more capable of blending highly varied styles and suggestions.

Hall Of Thatch, an album released in January 2018, is a work inspired by a trip Reuter took to Vietnam. Interested in the country's history and culture, Rome delved into the study of Buddhist traditions and rituals, its chants and prayers, as well as its particular vision of "apocalypse," seen as a continuous cycle of creation and destruction, somewhat akin to what is narrated in Norse mythology, so distant from Abrahamic eschatology.

"Hall Of Thatch" is a record that puts voice and acoustic guitar front and center, partly departing from its predecessor, which - thanks in part to an inspired collaboration with Swedish musician Joakim Thåström - sounded far more rock and post-wave than his previous works.

Here Reuter looks, if anything, to dark-folk songwriting, but with an even more obscure and metaphysical approach, as if he were describing the age of decadence and disorder that precedes the arrival of the Maitreya Buddha. The references to Eastern spirituality are nonetheless steeped in a typically Mitteleuropean approach, in keeping with Rome's origins and cultural sensibility. One thinks in particular of the prose of Hermann Hesse, which seems to have greatly influenced Reuter's "Eastern" vision.

In truth, the solid lead single "Blighter" doesn't fully clarify the new direction Rome has taken. The track is meant as a trait d'union with the previous record. Tracks like "Hunter" and "Martyr," on the other hand, are genuine surprises, even for longtime fans: the former owes a debt to a kind of doom-folk in the vein of Steve Von Till, while the latter echoes Swans-like cacophonies, through a violent vocal delivery rather unusual for the Luxembourg neofolker. A peculiar use of the voice is also found in "Keeper," with a harsh, raspy vocal that spills over into a kind of desperate wailing before the final redemption in "Clemency." The latter is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Gira when he picks up an acoustic guitar. In tracks like "Hawker" and "Prayer," various field recordings from Reuter's trip to Vietnam surface in the background, like mantras guiding us toward dark and mysterious territories of the spirit.

The fire still smolders beneath Europe's ashes

Le Ceneri di Heliodoro (2019) is a poetic meditation on the crisis gripping the European continent and, by due extension, the whole of the West. The record is a sort of return to the origins of the martial-neofolk style of the trilogy made in the early 2000s for Sweden's Cold Meat Industry. At the same time, the Luxembourg artist has absorbed the experimentation of his previous works into a lyrical vision underpinned by a remarkably robust conceptual framework.

It opens straight away with "Sacra Entrata," a pompous, triumphal entrance in the Blood Axis vein dedicated to the legionary brothers, with a long text declaimed by Erin Powell (Awen) over a martial backdrop of drums. The track closes with a female spoken part, in perfect Italian, telling us of a poet, soldier and aviator, destined to lead the new man of twentieth-century memory. The reference to Gabriele D'Annunzio seems fairly explicit. The following "A New Unfolding" invites us into a properly neofolk dimension, and one can't help but feel a chill as Reuter exclaims, in excellent German, "Immer wieder widerstand!"

With "Who Only Europe Know" and "The West Knows Best" we're thrust into the beating heart of the album. The first track is a reflection on how European soil is part of our blood, our heritage. At the same time, now more than ever, the continent risks becoming a ghetto. The second is a reflection on the West, and in particular on that America "we loved" and that always knew what was best for everyone. Naturally, irony and melancholic contempt shine through for how things have turned out. How could it be otherwise, after all? Both tracks had been well road-tested and performed live at various shows throughout 2018.

In the inspired "Feindberührung," Rome, with a fundamentally dark-folk attitude, invites us to teach joy within despair, managing to rekindle today the spirit of historic bands like Sol Invictus and Sonne Hagal. "Fliegen Wie Voegel" closes the first part of the album (called, in Italian, "Apertura") with a song in English and German dedicated to flight and the courage to dare. Here Reuter seems to partly revisit the D'Annunzio-esque references found in "Sacra Entrata," but with a more romantic than martial vision.

The second part of the record (called, in Italian, "Clausura") opens with the single "One Lion's Roar," which stakes a claim to being one of the finest songs Rome has ever written, certainly one of the most compelling, on a par with "One Fire," found on A Passage To Rhodesia. A lion's roar capable of scattering millions of sheep is certainly a strong and effective image. In the background, we hear the Italian-language sample already present in "Sacra Entrata," as if closing the circle, a kind of ouroboros biting its own tail beneath the seven stars of the Great Bear.

Another highlight of the work is "The Legion Of Rome," which opens with "La Fin D'Un Monde," a brief interlude quoting the words of Bertolt Brecht: "Was dieses Land braucht, ist 20 Jahre Ideologie-Zertrümmerung." Reuter has surely drawn inspiration from his visits to Italy to craft a sharp and far from banal reflection on nationalism and the cycles of history. "Uropia O Morte" is a poignant ballad on the theme of the wars that have soaked European soil in blood. Reuter plays on the words Europa and Utopia, but also on that "Ur" which evokes something original and enduring.

Closing everything out is the martial anguish of "Desinvolture," which brings to mind the drift of "Take Care And Control," the seminal collaboration between Douglas P. and Albin Julius under the Death In June banner.

We're looking at one of Rome's finest works, perfectly capturing certain feelings that run through our times in light of a deep, abiding passion for European history.

Less than a year later, Our Man returns with another album. This time Reuter relocates to Ireland to record the nine tracks that make up The Dublin Session, a peculiar experiment in his discography that finds him grappling with Irish folk music for the first time. Amid echoes of traditional ballads and the use of instruments like the bouzouki, uilleann pipes and banjo, Rome transports us on a fascinating journey through the green landscapes of the Emerald Isle, the land of Fionn Mac Cumhaill and leprechauns. Listening to tracks like "Antenora", "Holy Ennui" and "Rakes And Rovers", we picture smoky pubs from a world now gone, where ancient choral songs are still sung over pints of stout.

Reuter doesn't let the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall slip by, and releases the commemorative 7" Hinter Den Mauern Der Stadt. Here Our Man covers a famous song by Die Skeptiker, a prominent punk band from the GDR era, with help from Eugen Balanskat, singer of the Berlin group. The track is a sharp reflection on life behind the Wall and, more generally, under communist dictatorship.

2019 sees a tireless Reuter also carry out a very particular experiment, Käferzeit. It's an instrumental work of pure, traditional martial industrial, built through an artfully mixed cut-up of recordings. In practice, it's a return to the earliest, unforgettable Der Blutharsch, to the delight of fans of certain elitist sonorities. The record, released only in a limited vinyl edition, comes with a signed postcard and a quote (in German) from French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard: "Nur die aesthetische Kategorie des Erhabenen kann das Totalitäre aus der Kunst entfernen" ("Only the aesthetic category of the sublime can remove the totalitarian from art"). It seems Reuter has (re)developed a taste for this, and it won't be the only release of its kind. A new one is planned under the M.A.S. (Martial Ambient Series) banner, this time set against the backdrop of Paris under German occupation. The work will be titled Gärten und Straßen, borrowing the title of Ernst Jünger's diary published in 1942.

Meanwhile, an unstoppable Reuter releases a single featuring Alan Averill of black metal band Primordial. The 7" is titled Ächtung, Baby!, a title that evokes the famous U2 record, and, together with the second single Kali Yuga Über Alles, serves as a preview of the new album The Lone Furrow. Stylistically it's a record in pure Rome style, but with interesting departures thanks to the many voices that enrich its sound here without ever distorting it. The voice of Finnish writer, musician and filmmaker Aki Cederberg opens the record with "Masters Of The Earth", a fierce invective against a modernity that hides behind false myths of progress in order to strangle the world.

After the beautiful "Tyriat Sig Tyrias", introduced in the album's liner notes with words by poet Ezra Pound ("Out of all this beauty somenthing must come"), it's the turn of "Ächtung, Baby". The words of the chorus alone are worth an entire neofolk discography:

We preserve the fire

We protect the flame

Our Gods eternal

Go by different names

Next comes the brief spoken-word (but no less sharp for it) "Making Enemies In The New Age", featuring Joseph Rowland of American doom metal band Pallbearer. Amid Orwell quotes and dystopian visions that feel sadly realistic and current, it sets the perfect stage for the following "The Angry Cup", a track featuring guest Adam Darski, better known as Nergal, Polish musician and frontman of black/death metal band Behemoth. Nergal has recently also ventured into uncharted folk/country territory with his project Me And That Man, and here we breathe a bit of that same dusty, dark, angry air that can't help but recall Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — the wild days of "The Firstborn Is Dead", to be clear. Next is "The Twain", a track inspired by the writings of Rudyard Kipling, leaning toward Rome's more singer-songwriter, solemn side.

The first part of the record closes with "Kali Yuga Über Alles", the splendid second single taken from the album. Aki Cederberg's voice and words return, here backed by Reuter's own and by heavy, relentless martial drums. The title is an ironic nod to the famous Dead Kennedys song "California Über Alles", while the lyrics are partly inspired by the writings of Ovid. Together with "Ächtung, Baby" it's one of the record's high points. Two tracks that will surely be burned into Rome's discography.

The second part of the record opens with "The Weight of Light", a spoken piece inspired by the reflections of Friedrich Nietzsche. A track dense with mystical visions that stir over an ambient bed before fading into the delicate piano notes of "The Lay of Ira", a track whose words emerge from the suggestions of Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson. The latter features J.J. (V. Wahntraum), singer of Harakiri for the Sky, lending a hand to the Luxembourger.

"On Albion's Plan" immerses itself once again in the Irish atmospheres that underpinned the folk melodies of the album "The Dublin Session", while "Palmyra", alongside the two singles, is another pillar of the work. The song, featuring Laure le Prunenec (Igorrr/Rïcïnn), is dedicated to the archaeological site violated by jihadist militants in a vain attempt to erase the traces of an ancient, proudly pagan/Eurasian world that had one of its millennia-old cradles right in that region. The song is spoken in flawless French and manages to create an atmosphere that is at once sorrowful and solemn, like the epitaph of an ancient world that always rises again from its own ashes.

Closing everything out is "Obsidian", a fine tribute to Ernst Jünger sung in German. Next is "A Peak of One's Own", a sort of outro that picks up the theme of the Kali Yuga, the dark age we live in. It's a cyclical time in which, against the sea of ignorance, confusion and hysteria, one can only respond with a smile from above, standing on the ruins of this fading modernity.

Coming off two of the best albums of his career, Reuter returns in 2021 with a new work. Parlez-Vous Hate? fully lives up to the high expectations with a direct, pure, combative folk-rock record. Here too Rome rails against the paradoxes and decay of modern times. The new album can be considered part of a trilogy on a modernity in full collapse, folding in on itself.

The target here is the censorship generated by an obsession with political correctness. Starting with the title track (following the brief intro "Shangri-Fa"), Rome lashes out against that culture-killing, fundamentalist approach which, originating in Anglo-Saxon countries, has taken hold across nearly the entire Western world. The following "Born In The E.U." is a tribute to his own European roots and a kind of homage to Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA", laced with a certain irony. Rome, as a "critical patriot", sings here of Europe, letting the contradictions of the EU's bureaucratic/financial project emerge between the lines. The real surprise of the record is "Panzerschokolade", a decisive turn toward a martial industrial sound steeped in a non-conformist, iconoclastic spirit. The song's video seems to evoke a chemical, at times psychedelic nightmare, a bad trip with unsettling coughing fits at the end.

In short, “Parlez-Vous Hate?” is a collection of short, highly direct tracks, explicit in their criticism of our present, without ever lapsing into nihilism or resignation. Musically, the album bears some traces of Reuter's Irish experience, immortalized in the Dublin sessions.

Also in 2021, Reuter released a new album titled Hansa Studios Session II. This is a new live recording made in the famous building on Köthener Straße. Backing the Luxembourgish musician are Vlad Purice on bass, Eric Becker on guitar, and Laurent Fuchs on drums and percussion. This time the intent is mainly to present new tracks drawn from the recent albums Le Ceneri di Heliodoro (2019) and The Lone Furrow (2020), two true masterpieces that stand out even within Rome's rich discography.

As if to create a thread connecting to the past, the second part of the album opens with one of the very first songs Reuter ever wrote. "Like Lovers" first appeared on Rome's debut EP, "Berlin," released back in 2006 on Cold Meat Industry. Here the layers of meaning intertwine. There's a tribute to Berlin, the story of two lovers set against the backdrop of 20th-century European history, and above all the line declaimed defiantly: “Compromise? – Compromise – is not possible!”. Could this be the URtopia to strive for? In any case, this version of "Like Lovers" rises from the ruins of distorted guitars and is worth the price of the album on its own.

Hansa Studios Session II presents excellent versions of some essential tracks from the Luxembourgish artist's most recent discography. Half compilation, half live session, the album delivers a vivid, adrenaline-charged vision of a chronicler of our times. Reuter is a true rebel unafraid to challenge the dominant ideology while always keeping his back straight. It's "alternative music," as one would once have said. Rome confirms itself as the ideal chronicler of one of the West's and Europe's bleakest moments, yet beneath the ashes and ruins, the desire for redemption still seems to burn.

A couple of airy singles released during the summer of 2022 heralded Reuter's return. A new album, titled Hegemonikon, arrived right on schedule in late autumn, revealing a desire to shift some of the project's balances further still: the Luxembourgish musician brings in a synth collaborator (Tom Gatti), momentarily setting aside the recent electric ballads of "Parlez-Vous Hate?" to make room for icier passages, where Rome's traditional neofolk approach meets new wave. The end result is a decent but still transitional work, where here and there one senses a certain lack of nerve in attempting bolder, more original solutions, especially given the introduction of the electronic component.

The war in Ukraine

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted Jérôme Reuter to record a markedly pro-Ukrainian concept album that fits perfectly within the trajectory of his earlier reflections on the European continent. The struggle for freedom and the defense of democracy against tyranny are certainly the primary concerns of Gates Of Europe, an LP born of the best intentions, driven by genuine empathy for the unspeakable suffering of the Ukrainian people. The cities that have filled news broadcasts worldwide for over a year now (Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kherson, etc.) become the gates of Europe, a symbol of a different idea of community and tolerance toward minorities.

The music of the Rome project retains its usual neofolk coordinates, at times with a simpler, more immediate sound, almost seeking a tear-jerking anthem. This works perfectly on the single "Yellow And Blue," a candidate to become the pop soundtrack of Ukraine's martyrs. "Gates Of Europe" plays precisely on the strings of emotion, and at times it succeeds, deepening this feeling listen after listen, building a continuous clash between good and evil ("How Came Beauty Against This Blackness," "The Black Axis") and remembering the fallen ("Ballad Of Mariupol") through traditional ballads and poignant lyrics.

While Jérôme Reuter's intent is certainly commendable, one has to wonder whether taking such a clear-cut stance serves his role as an artist. As he himself has said on several occasions in interviews, an artist shouldn't reveal everything – but should leave a sense of mystery about his own ideas – perhaps sticking to universal principles of freedom and equality rather than diving headlong into current events. Without taking anything away from those who are rightly and heroically fighting for their own land, perhaps taking such a firm stand between two imperialisms (thus essentially between two evils) doesn't help make universal the message of peace and brotherhood that is surely what matters most to Reuter.

Contributions by Mauro Roma (“Confessions d'un Voleur d'Ames”, “Masse Mensch Material” and “Flowers From Exile”), Lorenzo Pagani (“Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit” and “A Passage To Rhodesia”), Matteo Meda (“Hell Money”), Paolo Chemnitz (“Hegemonikon”), Valerio D’Onofrio (“Gates Of Europe”)

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