Rome Plough The Lone Furrow

10 August, 2020
Written by Marky Edison

Following on from the universal acclaim of their latest LP, Le Ceneri Di Heliodoro, Rome releases one of the most impressive releases in its prolific career of 15 years. The Lone Furrow is the logical culmination of Rome’s previous endeavours, a brilliant and patient demolition of the despiritualized modern age, timeless in its critique of man’s greed and the deliberate desecration of beautiful things. Rome is back to fearlessly settle accounts of the spirit, with that grave trademark voice, whose tone can be likened to a wise-man’s oracle, deepened by countless cigars and pools of stout, or, at times, a Stuka bomber nose-diving into dry gravel.

Rome’s art always stays slightly beyond the pale and Reuter certainly is what the mainstream would call a joyous outsider. The Lone Furrow is a mordant, clear-eyed critique of the modern world, spun with the delicacy of a spiderweb; a journey through the ravaged landscapes of history; a spiritual quest weaving a unique poetry of withdrawal from the troubling world into distant retreats. And yet, at the same time, this collection of remarkable compositions is a generous invitation to a great European tradition of literary thought from Hesse to Nietzsche, from Tacitus to Orwell, from Ovid to the Edda, from Yeats to Baudelaire.

Rome is a dark world that glows with the intensity of Jerome’s remarkable gift for language. Its multilingual nature has always been an essential part of Rome - certainly in its sample work- and Reuter is showcasing this by singing (mainly) in English but including songs in French and German on The Lone Furrow as well.

On ‘Ächtung, Baby!’ (a tongue-in-cheek reference to U2’s 1991 record) Jerome is joined by Alan Averill of metal cult band Primordial. Indeed, the features and guest appearances are numerous on this record. This shows the fact that, through years of composing high quality albums, Rome has become a secret authority in the European underground as a songwriter’s songwriter. And thus, Reuter, a poet with the soul of a warrior, has managed to assemble an impressive/stellar cast of guest vocalists. Most notably is the guest appearance of Behemoth’s Adam Nergal Darski on the ‘The Angry Cup’, on which Nergal not only performs lead vocals but adds an intriguingly brutal Polish incantation. Further guests are Laure Le Prunenec of Rïcïnn, Joseph D. Rowland of US-doom band Pallbearer, J.J. of Austria’s Harakiri For The Sky.