Nero Kane

Nero Kane is the gothic-dark-folk project of Marco Mezzadri, which began as a solo project under the name Nero, later enriched by the collaboration of audiovisual artist Samantha Stella. Nero Kane’s music delves deeply into dark-folk poetics, its fascination with darkness and death, that powerful and typically gothic feeling that life is only a brief parenthesis between two absolute voids that continually attract us, as can be seen from the videos that are meant to be an integral part of the listening experience. The compositions are therefore metaphors for the fleetingness of life and the futility of the frantic race toward the nothingness of contemporary society.

The foundation of Marco Mezzadri’s ideas lies in the total absence of percussion and in the slow, expanded atmospheres that—in this respect—go even beyond conventional dark-folk. The settings are the American deserts, which have provided so much inspiration to artists around the world, and cemeteries, meeting points between life and death. Mezzadri and Stella could be defined as the Italian Michael Gira/Jarboe in their apocalyptic-folk works, as heirs to the tragic poetry of Nico in others, sometimes recalling the pitch-black post-rock of Labradford, with a voice reduced to a mere sigh in the darkness.

The debut under the name Nero is the clandestine Lust Soul (2016), now impossible to find, close to a more traditional gothic rock that pays homage to Death In June and often sounds between Christian Death and the Cramps, still far from his imminent future.

In the same year, he released a live performance entitled Hell23, for the first time under the moniker Nero Kane, marking a first peak in his discography. It is a long (seventeen minutes) and courageous odyssey of cosmic drones, distorted guitars, and recitations. Conceived by Samantha Stella and presented at the OED art gallery in Milan and at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, this audiovisual performance reveals for the first time the duo’s shamanic component, inspired by the Cumaean Sibyl and clearly by the soundtrack music of the tandem Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem.

With Love In A Dying World (2018), Nero Kane approaches a leaner and darker folk sound, while Samantha Stella works on the documentary/experimental on the road film that accompanies the album. The project shifts from the gothic rock of the debut to a folk-blues close to American frontier culture, fascinated by vast landscapes and the sense of freedom they offer. The main theme running through the whole album remains the poetics of death and the transience of everything around us. If the world is dying, love still survives in some cases—the only ones worth living—to savor the last glimpses of freedom and happiness. The sparse blues of “Black Crows” follows this path, as do the repetitive guitar patterns of “Now The Day Is Over” or the apocalyptic folk of “Desert Soul.”
In closing, the instrumental title track, with its glacial guitar layers, represents the most poetic and experimental moment.

Tales Of Faith And Lunacy (2020) is the definitive consecration of the project. Gira/Mezzadri finally finds his Jarboe/Stella, and the symbiosis is unmistakable. Samantha Stella’s keyboards become an integral part of the sound, greatly expanding the sonic possibilities, particularly the idea of music as pure atmosphere, a black backdrop for the lyrics of the two alternating vocalists. The masterpiece of the album—and perhaps the pinnacle of their discography—is the ten-minute “Angelene’s Desert,” which opens on a keyboard drone—sounding like a Nico track declaiming imminent apocalypses—over which the guitar delicately weaves almost psychedelic notes, like a gothic prayer recited by a priestess/shaman. “Magdalene” seems an even more desert-ridden version of “Angelene’s Desert,” with guitar notes introducing a desolate lysergic journey. The glacial arpeggios of “Mechthild” recall the desolate poetics of Labradford, just as the doom-laden crescendos of “Lord Won’t Come” recall the dark ballads of Darkher.

A European tour followed, documented in the live album Tales of Faith And Lunacy – Live Session (2022), recorded in Teramo in December 2021.

After two years came Of Knowledge And Revelation, an even more macabre and visionary evolution of its predecessor. The desert—both as a real place and as an inner wasteland—is now fully tangible; the tracks lengthen, the voice grows more whispered, and the music becomes increasingly atmospheric. Perfect summaries of the duo’s ideas are the opening and closing tracks, “Lady Of Sorrow” and “Sola Gratia.” The former is a sort of dedication to death recited in a cemetery while awaiting one’s final farewell, where Stella’s voice joins Mezzadri’s in full Gira/Jarboe style. “Sola Gratia” is the new poetic peak. Keyboards open the track, then are submerged by waves of distorted guitar, like a gothic prayer recited in a catacomb. Another gothic gem is “Burn The Faith,” dominated by synths that—once again—recall the darkest universe of Nico and Darkher.

For The Love, The Death And The Poetry is probably their most mature, cohesive, and powerful album. A direct work that does not renounce the poetic coherence that has always distinguished them: dark reflections on life, love, and death, intertwined to the point of making the three themes inseparable, in the great tradition of the American songwriters who shaped Nero’s writing.

The journey opens with “As An Angel’s Voice”: a single note pulsing like a funeral bell introduces the vocal mantra “Come to me,” obsessive and otherworldly, as if coming from a threshold between life and the afterlife. With a more abrasive volume and a more distorted guitar, it could resemble a track by the Swans. From the start, Nero Kane’s music reveals itself as a poetic requiem, a funeral chant where love and death intertwine.

“My Pain Will Come Back To You” shows his *dark songwriter* soul, with a cursed lyric singing the indelible and inescapable pain of existence. The dilated, vaguely psychedelic guitar drags the listener toward a hypnotic finale. One of the peaks of the album is “Land Of Nothing”: Samantha Stella recites words about the horror of life (“Where lovers are only shadows, behold the land”) over two ultra-slow mellotron notes that create a spectral, solemn atmosphere.

“The World Heedless Of Our Pain” seems like an evocation of Labradford: minimal lines that slowly expand until Stella’s voice enters, here close to a neoclassical intensity. Twilight takes shape in the apocalyptic folk of “There Is No End,” which reflects on the infinite, meaningless cycle of existence. The closure arrives with “Until The Light Of Heaven Comes”: two low notes—almost like a cello—support words seeking forgiveness and relief (“until my soul will burn”). A suspended farewell, a cathartic goodbye reminiscent of the atmospheres of “Desertshore.”

With "For The Love, The Death And The Poetry", Nero Kane signs for the first time an album without dips in tension: each track lives in perfect balance, in a stillness that is a stylistic hallmark but never immobility, constantly shifting and regenerating from one piece to the next. It is a work of full maturity, sealing a coherent path while opening the way to a future that promises to be long and fertile.