My review: Nero Kane - Of Knowledge and Revelation

Nero Kane - Of Knowledge and Revelation

I often imagine the soul of little Archimedes looking at his world, searching for sparks to see his mind strive. I believe that today we would all need his unstoppable motion and creative quality, his willingness to discover, to get busy.

It is in this absence that my sadness wanders to moors far from my sight, where much is created but little is invented.

Who is it that can give me this vision perfectly?

A breath of wind through the fog: Nero Kane, an Italian elf who lives in the mysterious folds of places that are not allowed to enter.

How can you consider music what opens up your consciousness and makes you sweat with the trembling joy which swims on your skin?

I’ve been listening, as if enraptured, to these passages for days, I look at them and realise how art comes from the gaze of Archimedes: we have an heir.

You can indulge as much as you like, and even accurately, to classify the musical genres of this alleged, for you certainly such, new album.

But I remain with my conviction: we are before the invincible presence of a spirit that has taken the responsibility to open up the heavens of our certainties and to add new wonders.

Places have not our language, we can hardly understand them, Nero Kane has generously allowed his goodness to do it for us, and here we are overwhelmed, uncovered, immersed in ancient codes revealed by his choice: like a painter of mystery, he has depicted the oldest secrets on his canvas, translating them through modern property of language, which in comparison shows a lack of style.

And inventor artist from Milan comes out on top, able to do everything perfectly, combining distant worlds and epochs to give us an overall vision of absurd beauty.

The ancient slowness returns, with the wind kissing the rain and seeking our eyes, among the lightning that enters fingers as they search for the guitar, the talking queen, the communicant elected by the Goddess of beauty, Aphrodite.

We find ourselves in a listening that unearths the treasures of the earth, music that does not use the muscles but the eyes, in a close dialogue with the fingers and the hypothesis of a flight that witnesses, verifies, contemplates the nakedness and deceptions of time. Everything knows slowness and method, an orderly futurist study in the amplitude of reception. There are dramatic peaks, mental edifices during the analysis phase, with the care that is proposed, used and which is capable of providing a solution. Music of celestial infarction, packaged to open amazement and attention to an ideal inner climate.

Spirits dress elegantly before this classy performance: they are not used to it and seem lost. Folk becomes aware of its new needs and is pushed with determination towards the darkest psychedelic caress.

The control zones of the tensions evoked and wisely displayed hurt, very badly: even the darkness trembles and the roar warms the cognition because we are in front of an immense flow of peculiarities studied at the table, like an exact science without stuttering or hesitation.

But let's not waste time and immediately show the contents of this diadem.

Song by Song

1 Lady of Sorrow

A guitar moves suspiciously over a gloomy carpet of keyboards that cover the breath, conveying glacial feelings and mystery to a track that includes Nero Kane's crooning, presenting life under the moon. The visionary planet begins, through the suggestions opening the album perfectly. And it is dark-folk imbued with gothic, slow particles, with an ambient aptitude that renders ethereal the way the concept is expressed.

2 Burn the Faith

A beginning that leaves the suspicion of synthwave taking possession of evil, with Samantha Stella's voice which is able to hypnotize, with majestic quality, in the belly of faith, desires and passions. A funereal procession that stimulate reflection in those who kill for love. The musical monotony gives credibility and continuous tremor.

3 The Vale of Rest

Echoes of Dead Can Dance penetrate the suspense, then Nero's vocals crash any doubt or confidence, leading us towards Death in June. The fire warms calmness and always burns it with extreme slowness, without any need to rush the rhythm. And it is a sinister prayer, the meeting of a wounded poem that then leads to the two voices which unite to make everything ghostly.

4 The Pale Kingdom

The baroque arpeggio suspends time, Samantha sings as a witch attracted to faces, giving the vocal interpretation an icy labyrinth that produces trembling sighs. The album finds a track that already represents it perfectly with the musical modalities united towards tenebrous madness.

5 The End, the Beginning, the Eternal

How to try to exterminate death-related nightmares, in the song that experiences the union of time reaching infinity. Magic drinks away all fear and gives the misery of the intention to be eternal, and everything becomes massive despite a splendid melodic line.

6 Lacrimi și Sfinți

It is a pilgrimage into nature in search of truth, with the organ mocking us with a few chords. Dreams are broken and the nakedness of the soul is experienced with deathrock particles thanks to that very instrument. But the music is on the plane of folk filled with darkness and fascinations towards the ethereal mass that drives one to follow the planets of the universe. A recitative that clutches our Adam's apple to make it sob.

7 The River of Light

Dante walks in one of his circles, the water cradles until the arrival of the guitar that makes us perform dance steps with our eyes closed, hypnotised, to bring every inner darkness towards the catharsis that is necessary. Sopor Aeternus places an ancestral smile and a muddy breath on the fingers of Nero Kane, who develops a tension filled with attraction, to the point of hypnosis. A long wait takes possession of our listening as elevation of a total consciousness.

8 Sola Gratia

Experimental theatre moves the chair from the stage to let in the spirit of Gregorian-sounding voices. And it is the terror of fear, of Lovecraft, one can hear the progress of a pitiless search that leads to the chorus of the two voices, merciless in their simplicity and evocative capacity. Everything becomes minuscule, minimalist, definitive, disarming in its gloom, obsessive, liturgical. The fire now crackles within frightened bones, and we reach the album's conclusion having touched the depths of pain and contemplation.

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9th November 2022

https://nerokane.bandcamp.com/album/of-knowledge-and-revelation

https://open.spotify.com/album/0YFJKXICbnnNkkklP93Let?si=p2Wpy-9MRfCkLzK3FXQfSg