Nero Kane and Samantha Stella return with a new chapter in their dark, poetic universe. Amid a turbulent moment in history, the duo is experiencing an intensely creative period marked by the release of their fourth album, For the Love of the Death and the Poetry, and a series of evocative Ritual Folk Shows across Italy. Blending minimalistic soundscapes, haunting themes, and a deeply cohesive artistic vision, they continue to explore the delicate boundaries between love, death, and transcendence.
Welcome to Nero Kane
Hi Nero and Samantha, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine! How are you doing, and how’s life treating you these days?
Nero: Hi, and thanks for having us on Femme Metal Webzine. Pretty good, despite this dark — really dark — period in human history. It’s a beautiful moment for us with the release of the new album. It’s always like this when you finally see your work out in the world, completed. We’re also receiving a lot of kind words about it. And we’re deeply grateful to all the people who are appreciating this new record.
Samantha: Hi, very well and happily full of artistic projects. The new album with Nero Kane is out now. We have started our Ritual Folk Shows to promote it with the opening event in a former Baroque oratory in Parma for the Death Education Festival “Il Rumore del Lutto” (literally “the sound of mourning”).
And I have just finished an anthological exhibition in a contemporary arts center in my hometown, Genoa. In fact, it was dedicated to twenty years of my projects in visual art, dance/performance, and music. It has been a very busy period artistically speaking, in contrast to the disastrous historical times.
The new album For the Love of the Death and the Poetry by Nero Kane
On the 26th September 2025, it was released by Subsound Records the fourth album For the Love of the Death and the Poetry. What can you share about its general production?
Nero: In this new album I really wanted to work with a more minimal production compared to the previous record, Of Knowledge and Revelation. So the songs are stripped down to their essence. It’s a sort of return to the desert scenery — which is so important to me — of my first two albums Love in a Dying World and Tales of Faith and Lunacy.
At the same time a step forward, with a new and more focused kind of songwriting. I think this album has a good balance between the main aspects of my music: the gothic mood and intent mixed with the western wasteland imagery. Moreover, we recorded it at Outside Inside Studio, a beautiful place in the woods of northern Italy, run by Matt Bordin, who also recorded and produced my previous three albums.
Samantha: Matt Bordin is a precious collaborator for Nero Kane. His skill in recording and his care and taste in production are fundamental to our sound.
The challenge
For the Love of the Death and the Poetry explores the complex themes of eternal love, a deep fascination with death, and ghostly poetics. How challenging was it to bring all these delicate elements together into a cohesive work?
Nero: The most challenging aspect was not to replicate the same mood of the previous albums. Though to find a new way to communicate my world while remaining true to it and to myself. The themes explored in the album represent all the things that have always fascinated me. They are a sort of leitmotif of my life and reflect the romantic mood of my inner soul. I tend to conceive my records as a kind of concept albums. Moreover once I find the foundations of the work, I simply follow the mood.
My way of writing music and conceiving an album is deeply connected to the idea of a total work of art, where everything — from the artwork’s aesthetics to the photos and videos used for promotion — must be closely related to and representative of the music itself. It’s really important for me to work with this cohesive vision and approach.
Land of Nothing and The World Heedless of our Pain
Samantha: As always, it is something that exists in another dimension and takes shape in our unconscious until it reveals itself. The elements come together when the time is right. There is no anxiety or difficulty. Just knowing how to wait for that moment.
For this new album, in addition to the usual mellotron/organ accompaniment, I sang two songs written by Nero, one of which is more spoken word, which is my preferred style (Land of Nothing). And for the first time, I wrote and sang in Italian an opera-style chorus for the song that I consider most representative of this album, The World Heedless of our Pain.
The striking dualities of Nero Kane ‘s world
The world of Nero Kane is filled with striking dualities. What draws you most to these contrasts, and how do they shape your artistic vision?
Nero: In general, despite the mood of my songs — which is a strange and particular mix of classic songwriting, dark blues, psychedelia, gothic and dark ambient — I tend to define myself mainly as a songwriter, in the most classical sense of the word.
In the path traced by artists like Johnny Cash or Nick Cave, just to name a few. Their music, as mine, is filled with these contrasts because we simply speak about life. That’s the main drive of it — with all its shades, beauties, and difficulties.
Life and Death, Light and Darkness, Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil — they are all part of us. We are made of them, or we tend toward them in our inner nature. My artistic vision and my music are deeply connected to the way I see myself and the world around me. They represent me, and they speak for and about me.
Love, Death, and Poetry
Samantha: Personally, with the various languages at my disposal, I have always explored contrasts, or rather their blurred boundaries. Especially caducity and eternity, good and evil. The artistic cohesion with Nero Kane makes everything feel quite natural. Both in terms of lyrics (I didn’t write any for this latest album, but I wrote some for the previous two albums), in terms of sound (my propensity to use long overlapping drones of organ and cello fits perfectly with Nero‘s monotonous loops and stripped-down guitars.
And our two voices alternate and sometimes accompany each other in a very evocative way), and in terms of aesthetics, since I shoot and edit experimental films to accompany the albums, as well as taking the cover photographs in this case. Love, Death, and Poetry are themes that are since forever part of human thought, as philosophy teaches us. Nero Kane offers a morbid and captivating glimpse into this world. Evocative and hypnotic. But also rather heavy and profound, which may not be appreciated by everyone.
The single As an Angel’s Voice
The single As an Angel’s Voice introduced For the Love of the Death and the Poetry by highlighting the objects and symbols that have influenced your creative path. Could you delve into some of these symbols and explain what they personally mean to you?
Nero: I love art, especially ancient religious paintings, and Raffaello Sanzio’s Madonna of the Cardellino is a connection to this world. The skull represents Death, which fascinates me and often appears in my songs. The old photo of a young lady in a wedding dress represents Love and also reminds me of the experimental film “Love in a Dying World”, which Samantha and I shot in the American desert for my first album.
The little book with Pietas written on the cover represents Poetry and the Beauty of Art. As I mentioned before, these symbols are the main aspects of my life and they reflect the things that inspire my music and my creative path.
The short video for As an Angel’s Voice
Samantha: The short film I made for As an Angel’s Voice deliberately references symbols that appeared in the three previous albums and in my related experimental films, Love In A Dying World (2018), Tales of Faith and Lunacy (2020), and Of Knowledge and Revelation (2022). Religious aesthetics hold a considerable fascination for both Nero and myself, alongside a propensity for Victorian-Gothic-Western aesthetics.
Next plans for Nero Kane
What’s next for Nero Kane? Are there any plans for a tour or other upcoming projects you can share with us?
Nero: We started promoting the album in a beautiful ancient church in Parma at the festival called Il Rumore del Lutto, and we are continuing with a tour called Ritual Folk Shows, which will take us across Italy from North to South until December, with a short trip to France. Then in 2026 we will start touring Europe, and we are currently working on the schedule. You can see all the shows on my website, www.nerokane.com, and on my social channels.
Samantha: After an important tour like the “Temples Tour”, set mainly in churches in Europe and the UK, we decided to start presenting the new album in Italy, especially in the center and south, where we have never played before. We will be back in France in March 2026 and we are working on much more.
Closing words
Thank you so much, Nero and Samantha, for taking the time to chat with us! Do you have any final thoughts or messages you’d like to share with our readers and your fans?
Nero: Thanks to you for your time and interest in the project. I would like to close this interview with a famous line from John Keats’ poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, which is very beautiful and meaningful to me:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Samantha: Thank you all for your support. I hope that Art can make us better people.