The final episode of "Mitchell forgot to review these black metal albums." What a fool! The German duo Barditus has released "Nibelungentreue," a fourteen-song collection of paganistic neofolk. In this record, Uwe Nolte and Anti-Christian incorporate heavy folk elements, almost enough to give the album an "acoustic black metal" genre tag. For the next hour, Barditus will sweep me away with their... pagan-ness?

If "neofolk" describes two drunk bastards playing folk, then these guys are the poster children of the genre. First off, there's a lack of metal. For those unaware, this is Metal Temple, where we review metal albums. "Nibelungentreue" falls under (how many times can I say this) neofolk, a genre that blends traditional folk with the post-industrial scene of the late 1980's. As you could probably guess, not a lot of metal. Uwe's vocals, which I'll go further into later, have enough rasp and edge to maybe cross into that "acoustic black metal" area, but for the most part, this is folk. Neofolk's sister genre, martial industrial, incorporates elements of traditional European army marches with neoclassical darkwave, ambient, and the aforementioned post-indus weirdness. This is my first taste of the genre, but many of you have probably heard some form of it through Swans or Allagoch. My Swans era didn't cover neofolk, and I'm one of the two idiots whose never listened to Allagoch.

Enough genre semantics -- let's talk about the album. It's not my cup of tea, nor water, nor soda. Uwe's vocals are plain bad. From the opener, the filler tracks, and the closer, he's wailing and babbling on about chugging mead out of horns or other primitive pastimes. Some songs ("Song Above the Spring") use spoken word; most others are filled with his intoxicated rasp. Some tracks, mainly softer ones, are quite listenable and show Uwe's cleaner side. On the other hand, the instrumentation, mostly tribal drums and acoustic guitar, is quite pleasing. They're melodious and somewhat rich, but of course, the mastermind behind it all is named Anti-Christian. Lovely.

A shorter review today, because there's not much more to say about Bartidus. I'm sure neofolk is right up someone's alley, but I'm not in the right mood for it, and I may never be.