- Label: 'Trisol Music Group'
- Genre: 'Folk'
- Release Date: '6th December 2019'
Our Rating:
‘The Dublin Sessions’ sees renowned Luxembourg neofolk act Rome move some way away from the neo in favour of something altogether more traditional in origin, after Jerome Reuter spent some time with friends in Dublin in May 2019. As they tell it, they ‘ended up recording a selection of several new and gripping folk compositions. During these stout-fuelled sessions, local talents were quickly recruited to join in the fun and to give the tracks the necessary Irish grit with traditional instruments such as banjo, bouzouki and uilleann pipes’.
The album promises ‘songs that combine elements of the traditional world of Irish folk music and its up-beat feel, with Rome’s rather sombre contemporary songwriting and sentiment’. And so the 9 songs presented here still brood, but also kick up some of the more buoyant Celtic jig aspects of Irish folk without straying into the ceilidh knees-up roustabout drinking party fun that makes me want to set fire to certain festival crowd-pleasing acts.
Rome are is one of the few Neofolk acts deserving of attention, being not only musically and lyrically interesting in contrast to the self-important dirgey sludge that’s typical, but also one one of only a handful to openly renounce right-wing ideologies (In a 2011 interview with ‘Reflection of Darkness’, speaking of the recently completed trilogy of albums, Reuter said. ‘It reflects some early streams of the 20th century left-wing movements and thoughts – I share some of the views and I’ve always been outspoken about not liking the right-wing, but I don’t want ROME to be seen as a political project’).
If ‘Varterland’ has the grainy Teutonic grit of Rammstein, it conversely conveys a bitter resentment rather than a nationalistic chest-beating pride. ‘I’m sick of being reasonable, I’ll smash, slash, and burn it all / Did you really think we’d stay quiet through it all?’, Reuter growls on ‘Slash ‘n’ Burn’, and this is the articulation of an antagonism against the system, a worn and frustrated voice of protest. It’s actually quite beautiful. Elsewhere, ‘Mann Fur Mann’ picks n themes of persecution against a stomping rhythm and some frenetic banjo and searing fiddle.
In combining two distinct genres in the context of a certain apolitical politicalism, ‘The Dublin Sessions’ presents something of a conundrum, but one which is self-responsive, with the end result being darkly enjoyable.
