Purity Through Fire announces December 6th as the international release date for Barditus‚ debut album, Nibelungentreue, on digipack CD and vinyl LP formats.
Begun in 2004, Barditus is a studio & live project of Uwe Nolte, from the cult Orplid. In 2021, after nearly two decades since the first two initial EPs, Nolte revived the project together with Anti-Christian from Stern des Bundes. While Orplid’s sound is somewhere between neofolk and neoclassical, with themes ranging from Germanic paganism and Greek mythology to the Christian symbolism of the early Middle Ages and natural romanticism, here with Barditus do the duo explore a sound somewhere between paradigmatic neofolk and black metal – or even „acoustic black metal,“ if you will. And while in Orplid the occidental bastion was defended with the quill, Barditus take up the sword and unconditionally profess heroism and love.
Now Barditus raise that sword highest with their long-awaited debut album, Nibelungentreue. Comprising 14 songs in nearly an hour, Nibelungentreue is everything – and much more – adherents could’ve hoped for in a Barditus full-length. Presaged by 2023’s Dein Schwert mini-album, Barditus‚ debut album exudes a parallel passion and power that will be readily recognizable to fans of Orplid, with the pastoral-on-the-surface acoustics joined in their soon-to-be-bubbling-over frenzy by sharp shards of rowdy pagan black metal. And while the latter isn’t as prevalent here as on its short-length predecessor, Nibelungentreue’s more Spartan soundfield is imbued with even-greater depth: in addition to verses written by Nolte himself, a text of the contemporary poet Rolf Schilling is set to music, and guest performances include Ian Read of the esteemed Fire & Ice and Freya Aswynn, who is a Dutch-born writer and practitioner whose influential works on runes, magic, and a women-centered form of Germanic neopaganism have significantly shaped the modern pagan community worldwide. Barditus thus collide bathos and pathos, and harness their most power when the intensity dips – solitude and repose reverberating within the soul of the ancients. Erwache!
