Diego Romo’s Are The Lovers moves with the heavy, deliberate gait of something crawling out from beneath a nightclub after closing time, wearing somebody else’s leather jacket and carrying a grin that suggests the evening went either very well…or catastrophically wrong. The 24-year-old Chilean artist drags alternative rock, post-punk, synthwave, and gothic excess into the same dim room, then lets them eye one another suspiciously over the bassline.
The opening seconds establish a pace somewhere between a stalk and a crawl, allowing each low note to land with the authority of a hostile bouncer.
The sinister bass is the song’s center of gravity: thick, slow, and almost indecently physical. Around it, guitars grind without turning the track into a blunt-force exercise, while electronic textures give the production a futuristic chill. Strange sucking sounds appear between phrases, an inspired bit of studio mischief that makes the song feel as though it might latch on to your neck while you are busy admiring the chorus. Romo’s voice hangs above the arrangement in sheets of echo, cool enough to seem composed yet close enough to carry an unmistakable sense of appetite.
“This song is what I imagine would happen if Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails decided to write a song for sex in the year 2079,” he says.
One suspects the year 2079 will involve worse rent, smaller apartments, and considerably less flattering latex wear. Are The Lovers shares Queens of the Stone Age’s narcotic strut and Nine Inch Nails’ industrial unease, but Romo also reaches toward Depeche Mode’s decadent electronics, Type O Negative’s funereal sensuality, and the sleek night-drive menace associated with the late Kavinsky. The Horrors hover nearby in the track’s smeared textures, while the Arctic Monkeys comparison surfaces through its slow, knowing posture.
Seduction becomes more interesting when a little spice enters the room. Are The Lovers plods forward with purpose, leaving enough space for every drum hit, vocal echo, and unidentifiable mouth-like noise to register.
Listen to Are The Lovers below:
Are The Lovers presents Diego Romo as an artist with a firm grasp of atmosphere and a healthy suspicion of daylight. His mix of rock mythology, cyberpunk imagery, vampiric desire, and electronic menace could easily collapse into costume drama, yet the song maintains a sharp sense of control. It is sensual, strange, and slightly ridiculous in precisely the right proportions, which is often where rock music starts behaving properly again.
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