Published by Alessandro Violante on April 22, 2016
Relished comeback for Jérôme Reuter, Luxembourg-born musician active since 2005 under the Rome monicker: the last 1st of april, Trisol has published his new mini-album, entitled Coriolan. It’s a work that doesn’t follow a particular concept, as it happened for the most part of his releases, but, as declared by Reuter himself in a long interview on Heathen Harvest, it’s in some way a revisitation, after ten years and ten albums, of his first EP Berlin (released in 2006 by Cold Meat Industry), a sort of celebration with new and unreleased stuff of a decade of musical activity.
For sure, reading between the lines, a leitmotiv can be recognized by the ears of the more captive listeners: here the neofolk songwriting and singing-style of Rome focus on the topic of war and on its consequences (a topic about which Reuter is very interested), starting from the references to the legendary general Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, with all that this implies, following with William Shakespeare‘s tragedy, written among 1605 and 1608, to the well-known Ludwig Van Beethoven‘s composition composed in 1807 for the C0llin tragedy of 1804. Here Reuter recovers the controversial figure of Coriolanus, in particular by means of Lèo Ferré, singer, poet and anarchic writer whose influence was important also in Flowers from Exile (2009), a famous Rome’s concept album focused on the Spanish Civil War.
Caius Martius, nicknamed as Coriolanus after his courageous victory against the Volsci, is the typical character that we could expect to find into a Rome’s album: an anti-populist hero and politician who didn’t accept any compromise, at the end condemned as a traitor and an enemy of Rome, to which he will declare war before renouncing to his proposals of revenge to save the City.
The EP starts with the epic martial of Investiture, followed by Make You a Sword of Me, a gloomy spoken-word placed on a post-industrial sonic background, closing with the plumbeous Funeratio, a celebration of the defeat of ambitions upon a funeral pyre of sacrifice for the commonweal.
Keeping focus on the theme of war, we find the very beautiful Der Krieg, following the title track, the first Reuter’s song completely sang in German, which lyrics seems to talk about not too much distant scenarios from our Europe and our present: “Zaun und Mauer und letztlich nach Krieg – der Völker grausamstes Spiel ”
Musically, the EP doesn’t show any new particular element in style and in composition, with very good evocative and focused songs, such as Broken and the atmospheric This Light Shall Undress All, while a song as Fragments shows sounds closer to post-punk than neofolk.
While waiting a “larger-scale” effort, we’re here in front of an EP that synthesizes a bit the spirit and the interests of Reuter, with never ordinary and never usual references, sustained by a strong historical and cultural background that makes always the difference. With Coriolan, Rome confirms itself as a project with a typical personality, barely enclosed in political and musical stereotypes: music and words for open-minded people.
Label: Trisol
Rating: 8