Rome
Hell Money

New release for the unstoppable Gerome Reuter, seven times a dad from 2006 to today if you only consider full-lengths, twelve times if you count singles and mini-albums, not bad, right?

But as already mentioned on other occasions, when talking about Rome, quantity is not inversely proportional to quality, and so even the year 2012 is marked in blood and fire by a new release from the good Luxembourger, rewarding the brief wait, as punctual as a Swiss watch.

Preceded by the mini-album “Fester,” released in September, “Hell Money” is the new musical effort branded Rome: not a release like the others, given that this work had the tough task of following up an immense, unsurpassable work (for volume, research, commitment, message, and inspiration) which was “Die Aesthetik der Herrschaftsfreiheit” from last year, a triple album that certainly represented an important step for the career of the young musician.

So Gerome Reuter returns, once again solo, confirming behind the mixer his friend Duke Baudhuin and pursuing the choice to single-handedly handle the writing, arrangements, and execution of the entire album. Reuter returns, and he does not disappoint (not even this time, despite the immoral prolificacy), although for the first time in his career, one can talk about a phase of adjustment. After the superhuman effort the previous work must have cost him, Reuter prefers to rest on the comforting mantle of a more intimate dimension, in line with the maturity of singer-songwriter works such as “Flowers from Exile” and “Nos Chants Perdus,” albums that definitively severed the already tenuous ties with apocalyptic folk.

But “Hell Money” also serves us some small novelties.

Firstly, the music, which has always been the bearer of suggestions borrowed from the past, pulsating visions and scenarios typical of the “old Europe” (even though, after the “Spanish” album - “Flowers from Exile” - and the “French” album - “Nos Chants Perdus,” “Die Aesthetik...” assumed a universal connotation), today finds a greater rooting in actuality. The somewhat tacky cover, depicting a chained crow (which could very well feature on any gothic/metal album) and the seemingly banal title, certainly the least poetic ever adopted in his career, are the raw explicitations of what will be the themes addressed in the album, namely the aberrations of the capitalist economic system and its effects on the human psyche and society: it is Reuter's eternal struggle, Reuter's solitary crusade, which starts from afar to finally arrive at our days, a necessary corollary after the intense historiographical research that originated the recent works, an inevitable appendix that manifests in a frontal attack on the establishment, no longer indirectly criticized through the horrors of history, but this time confronted barehanded. With a raw, direct album, stripped of both the industrial superstructures adopted in the past and the elegance of the arrangements curated by the former producer Patrick Damiani, who has been absent since the previous work. As the author himself defines his latest creation, “Hell Money” is “an emotional tour-de-force through the inner wear and tear of a tormented individual, a journey into the heart of sadness, where greed, addiction, and self-immolation have taken control over mental health.” A hard album, as we said, dry, devoid of frills, reduced to the essence: a voice, a guitar, little else.

Secondly, “Hell Money,” in absolute coherence with the concept, but perhaps unconsciously, is also the most “American” album by Rome: after all, why not criticize capitalism starting from the place where it assumed its most abnormal form? And it's no coincidence that a quote from the very American William S. Burroughs is prominently displayed on the back cover, stating:

“Communication must become total and conscious

before we can stop it

Only those who can leave behind

everything they ever can leave behind in

can hope to escape”

The disdain for the existing, the desire to escape, the difficulty/necessity of emancipation through civil and individual commitment, through art, through an inner search that leads to the rediscovery of one’s dignity as a Man: ultimately the perennial features of the Reuter-thought, which find expression in “Hell Money” in the melancholy without comfort of ten acoustic ballads (+ intro and interlude), ten confessions that this time leave aside Death in June and are enriched with new moods, more American I feel I can affirm (at least in terms of sound, since this is not noticeable in the lyrics). And so “Hell Money”, net of his unmistakable stylistic signature, seems suspended between Springsteenian epic and obsessions borrowed from the corrosive Swansian world, halfway therefore between the passionate Springsteen, a catalyst of souls, generator of a collective dream, and the nihilistic Gira, a grim bard of alienation, a psychotic beast devouring human and earthly hopes: Springsteen and Gira, not coincidentally two heroes, different and in some ways at opposite ends, of the “America endowed with critical spirit.” And if you don't believe me, listen to the single “Fester,” where the guitar arpeggios and the effects surrounding it ride obsessively, coldly, paranoidly, where the voice starts vibrant, seductive, only to explode in a hallucinated, epic refrain, a bacchanal of deranged cowboys that wouldn't spoil inside the latest recording by the Swans (who sixteen years ago, not coincidentally, released “Greed” and “Holy Money”).

But it's still a matter of nuances, because the Rome identity remains intact, strong, and recognizable, and this “Hell Money”, in its forty-three minutes of duration, certainly won't disappoint the fans of the project. Even if overall a generic decrease in tension is noticeable, not to mention an overarching sense of déjà vu that at times becomes more pronounced than in the past. However, the awareness remains that pieces like “This Silver Coil” and “Rough Magic” remain true masterpieces, decidedly not within everyone’s reach (inside and outside the universe of dark music), revealing further growth of Reuter both as an author and as an interpreter, whose voice – an ever more refined instrument – ends up reaching peaks of renewed intensity, further distancing Reuter’s sensitivity from the more typical schemes of apocalyptic folk, a genre with which Our Man today has very little in common, except for the decadent mood and the fiery anti-system theses.

A Reuter therefore totally devoted to songwriting, although certain passages (the intro “Tangier Fix,” the interlude “Among the Wild Boys”) and some details scattered here and there at times bring us back to the industrial shadows of the past, not entirely dormant, but still largely downsized. Furthermore, a new psychotic component emerges in the dissonant setup of certain solutions, certain stop & go that enliven the listening experience, as happens in the catastrophic “Amsterdam, the Clearing,” which, while not giving up its acoustic guise, candidates itself as the most movement-filled track of the lot (its false ending and surprising restart dense with tragic monumentality worthy of the Neurosis, the acoustic ones, of course, are textbook). The rest are Reuter’s usual ballads, sometimes true gems (“Tightrope Walker,” of evident Cave-esque brand), but unfortunately, they do not always hit the target (the dull “Silverstream” and “Golden Boy”), and sometimes they indulge in excessively self-destructive minimalism (the detuned banjo and the lone voice in “Pornero,” a blatant tribute to the flair of Tom Waits, always a source of inspiration for Our Man; or the desolate piano in “Red-Bait,” contaminated by samples and background voices, as in the good old days). It’s a pity, finally, that as it approaches its conclusion, the album tends to deflate a bit, to lose intensity: without knowing how or why, one arrives slightly tired at the finish line of the last painful act, the interlocutory “Daemon Me (Come Clean),” soothing in the melodies as much as it is dense with cynicism and resignation in its lyrics.

There is thus a bit of bitterness at the end of the listening, as if this album lacked a something, or perhaps it is an intended effect: it is the process of identification that the author has accomplished by immersing himself in the warped mind of the “citizen of civilized capitalism” which, however, at times clashes with the intense lyricism of the romantic Reuter hero, fragile minstrel, humble witness of the afflictions of our time. The fact remains that “Hell Money” leaves a sense of anguish, as if the author places the listener – alone – before a disheartening dead end (perhaps a mirror?), without this time leaving a crack through which hope can be glimpsed.

“Chip chop chip chop, the last one is dead”