Nero Kane: Mechthild – single review

Nero Kane

Mechthild

DL / Vinyl

Out now!

Mechthild is the new single from Italian folk-noir songwriter Nero Kane in collaboration with Samantha Stella, and the second to be released from the album Tales of Faith and Lunacy.

Described as portraying “a love full of passion and sickness for God” the track was inspired by The Flowing Light of the Godhead from the writings of 13th Century German mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg – an excerpt of which can be heard spoken at the end of the song. As you might imagine from such source material the music has a hymnal aspect to it but with a dark and eerie tone. This haunting quality is amplified by Samantha Stella’s emotive and raw vocals.

Where much of its parent album is informed by Kane’s own lush alt-country vocal style, placing it somewhere in the Nick Cave/Orville Peck universe, having Stella take the lead on Mechthild lends it a ragged, fragile edge and tips it towards the more gothic sounding side of their work.

Mechthild is accompanied by a suitably dirt-track-in-the-desert video, shot in back and white and directed by Samantha Stella. Part of a series of short films for the album it sees her performing devotional rituals intercut with dreamlike images of horses, reminiscent of the climactic scenes of The Misfits.

Both the video and the song itself blend Americanna and European Gothic into a stylish dark package that feels both familiar and unusual at the same time.

Nero Kane can be found on Facebook | Bandcamp and their official website.

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All words © Susan Sloan. More of her work for Louder Than War is available on her archive. Find Susan on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter, and view Susan’s website here.