Rome

Performing in the United States for the first time at the Vendetta Festival in Denver, Luxembourg's Rome has caught the attention of fans of neo-folk and lushly dark music in general. Jerome Reuter is often compared to Leonard Cohen for his deep, resonant voice and the band to Angels of Light because of its weighty sounds grounded in the fusion of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. The band's closest musical cousin, however, is post-Nada Death in June and Douglas Pearce's dark romanticism and creative use of samples. Like Death in June, Rome makes use of sound to produce feelings of exaltation and nostalgia. With songs that could be the foreboding folk music of a new European empire, Rome's brooding sense of theater may be overwrought to some and a pinnacle of the post-industrial sound to others.