Rome’s ‘Nera’ turns 20 on 16 October
Luxembourg martial industrial and neofolk project Rome released its debut album, “Nera,” on 16 October 2006 through the Swedish label Cold Meat Industry. The record turns 20 this year.
Jerome Reuter wrote, performed and recorded “Nera” largely on his own, with Patrick Damiani handling recording engineering and mixing. The twelve-track album runs: “Der Zeitsturm,” “A Burden of Flowers,” “Reversion,” “A la faveur de la nuit,” “Das Unbedingte,” “Rape Blossoms,” “Beasts of Prey,” “The Blade Unmasked,” “Hope Dies Painless,” “Nera,” “Birds of Prey” and “Les hirondelles.” Rome signed to Cold Meat Industry in 2006 and released the “Nera” album alongside the “Berlin” EP the same year, pairing military drumming and horns with acoustic guitar and spoken-word samples, a sound the project has carried through its catalogue since.
About Rome
Jerome Reuter, born in Luxembourg in 1981, founded Rome in November 2005 as an outlet for his own songwriting. “Nera,” released the following year, introduced the project’s combination of martial percussion, horns and ethereal acoustic guitar with Reuter’s own vocals and lyrics, often written in French, German and English. Rome moved from Cold Meat Industry to the Trisol Music Group label in 2009, a relationship that has carried the project through most of its later catalogue, including “The Hyperion Machine” (2016).
Reuter performs live with a rotating cast of musicians while remaining the sole constant member and primary creative force behind the project. He has continued to release albums steadily since “Nera,” including “Confessions d’un voleur d’âmes” (2009), “Flowers from Exile” (2012) and “A Passage to Rhodesia” (2014), building a catalogue regarded as among the most prominent in the neofolk genre. “Nera,” the record that opened that catalogue two decades ago, turns 20 this October.
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