ROMES

Toronto-based electronic rock project Romes brings together Canadian brothers Jacob and Nicolas Bitove. Formed in 2016 around a core of four musicians who met on the benches of a school in Wicklow, Ireland, the band later settled in Canada and became a duo in 2020 after the amicable departure of James Tebbitt and Andrew Keyes. The name Romes, sometimes presented as the acronym 'Raw Overdriven Mind Expansion Systems', encapsulates a sound that blends abrasive guitars, heavy rhythms and dark electronic textures, situated between alternative rock and industrial influences. As early as 2017, Romes carved out a place on the North American scene with an appearance at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and an extensive US tour supporting Mutemath, followed by support shows for The Strokes, Silversun Pickups, The Warning and Saint Asonia. Having become fully independent, the duo released a series of singles from 2021, collected around the self-produced EP 'My Demons Are My Best Friends' released the same year. In 2024, Jacob and Nicolas Bitove contributed several tracks to the soundtrack of the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 alongside Jack Wall, extending their tense electronic rock aesthetic into the realm of scoring. In 2025, Romes unveiled 'Sonic Trash', an independently released album that distills this approach between upfront rock energy, detailed electronic production and melodic songwriting.