BARBAROSSA UMTRUNK: The keys to resacralize the world after the end of time

What are Your roots? Breton?

I'm not Breton, just French but with Austrian and Native Americans ancestral roots.

Could You please tell more about Your band, how did it begin? What albums, collaborations are/were the most interesting to You? What albums do You personally consider the best?

BvS: Barbarossa Umtrunk was trained by myself Baron von S and my brother in arms Ra Kha with whom I shared my passion for Industrial music, apocalyptic folk and the emerging "military" scene at the end of the 90s: Der Blutharsch and Blood Axis in first line.
Our love for this kind of music give us the impulse to start our own project. Atthat time we were in touch with Westwind and Neon Rain who urged us to throw us and help us to emerge. Our first appearance was a remix for a Westwind’s track on the “Vent Divin” limited edition released on Neuropa records. My own full lenght and favorite split are respectively: "Der Talisman of Rosenkreuzers", "Distant Shores of Hvetramannaland", "72 Candles in Cairo", "La Clairière des Eaux Mortes", "L’Age Noir", "Airyanem Vaejah" and to finish my best-of "Tagebuch eines Krieges" which has just been released on SkullLine and which I advise to the laymen who want to discover my music.

What does Your bands' name mean to You?

BvS: It is a reference to the universal myth of the “Sleepy Emperor” and the “King of the World”, illustrated by the figure of  Barbarossa. The idea of the name had come to us the day when i read the mention of a local alcohol named “Barbarossa Umtrunk” during the reading of an article dedicated to the site of Kyffhauser in a Swiss "neofolk" fanzine. We had found that the name sounds good and explicit references to Barbarossa Imperator established in power the guideline of the project and the métahistorical themes that we want to treat.

Could You please tell about Your main influences – earlier and now. What music, books, films, other things impress You?

BvS: I have numerous influences, musical, literary, artistic, métapolitic, esoteric, occultist etc. I have grows up by listening batcave & cold wave, punk hardcore and the industrial/EBM since the age of 14 years. When I was 18 years, right in the middle of the 90s, I was totally hooked by Death in June, Sol Invictus and Current 93. It was at the same time that I discovered the dark ambients soundscapes of "Cold Meat Industry" who will urge me one to impulse a project in the same kind of musiic. When I was a teenager, i discovered writers as Lovecraft and R.E.Howard which was a big influence for my further esoterical interests who cames later  to me. I have a big interest for the sacred and the religious phenomenon, the secret societies, Initiation and Tradition. I discovered Guénon under the advice of musical bands as Lonsai Maikov or Actus. It’s the same thing for the writes of Baron Evola that i discovered thanks to Sol Invictus. My favorite writers are Raymond Abellio, Gustav Meyrink, Jean Parvulesco, Robert Ervin Howard, Jean Robin, G.I. Gurdjieff and Henry Corbin. Many more authors stood out to me in a more fictionalized style, like Céline, Mishima, Cioran and Hermann Hesse. I have also sympathy for the movies of Eric Rohmer, Jean Rollin or still Fassbinder and Herzog.

I am also, as everyone knows, very interested in the métapolics and metahistory and over the years I have milit for movements close to the spheres of influence in the trail of the Conservative Revolution and  Nationalism restored with an Eurasist approach.

What is God/Gods to You? What is Your religion, philosophy, worldview?

BvS: For me Gods are not God and God, the “High One”, is an Unknown God, like were saying the old gnostics. For me Gods are principles and are along with us, a part of us, like for God, the Unique (call it Got, God, Allah, he’s the same for me) who live both above the universe and inside our heart. These last twenty years, I went my own sweet way and I traveled into various esoteric paths from Wicca to Sufism as well as Esoterical Christianism while I was also involved and interesting by various occult practices or even the history of french secret societies of the last century. I consider myself as a Gnostic or even a modern Cathar and I do not claim to belong in any particular exoteric confession, this question being according to me become obsolete at this Kali Yuga's end, when the last Watchers, the harvesters of midnight fix the dawn to come down from their holy mountain. If there is well a book which defines marvelously my vision of Apokatastase, it’s "Vers un Nouveau Prophétisme" from french ésotérist author Raymond Abellio who have sent us the keys to resacralize the world after the end of time, when will came a new dawn, a new golden age. I have otherwise an interest marked for the Ismaelian gnosis, Kabiris mysteries, primitive Christianity or even the Tibetan’s kalachakra tantra.

How do You call Your style?

BvS: Difficult for me to stick a label on my own music, I think it’s a mix of Military Industrial and Tribal/Ritual music including french spoken words but i prefer to leave this care to the journalists who much be in better place than me to define my music.

What could You say about black metal, neofolk, dark ambient projects (now we have pretty much of them)? Which ones are the best, in Your opinion?

BvS: If we compared with the end of  90’s, there is a actually great choice and deal of groups, among which some are dispensable. I think particularly of the so mainstream military scene which makes an excessive use of a redundant fascistic & teutonic imagery in the point to become "cheap" there. There is nevertheless full of interesting groups which preside within the various kinds that you quoted, and they are very too numerous for all to enumerate them. Thus I would make a little promotion for the music projects with which i had the opportunity to collaborate and which according to me are the best bands of our generation: my Italian comrade TSIDMZ, Schattenspiel, Kazeria, Siege Electronics, Militia Dei are projects that we must pay attention.

Is our civilization still going down and down? Do You believe in any possible end of it? What could that be?

BvS: According to me the only option at the moment is the establishment of new Weltanschauung who would have made a clean sweep of the consumerist society which pulls the strings of the West. So  it would be obviously necessary to return to the Tradition, or more exactly to adapt the Tradition to the world of tomorrow under the influence of a spiritual elite specifically established to prevent the “ark” from sinking as well as René Guénon had suggested it when he asserted that it is necessary to save “what remains to save to establish the germ of the future world”. My music by delivering  essential eschatologic & symbolic keys to face and to deal with the dissolution of the post-modern world, scattered "spiritual" seeds which i hope they will carry their fruits in the future.

It is the reason why Alexsandr Douguine's 4th political theory and Eurasia are for me métapoliticals concepts which deserve hope, although they are not completely under cover themselves of hostile wandering influences. And it is moreover the reason why sometimes it seemed to me necessary to denounce  negatives manipulations who cames from the inside, within our own geopolitical spheres of influence victim of their own klippoths and " corrosive influences". The last "Men" still " standing above  Ruins " thus have to double vigilance and keep the “guard”, the very high head, established down from the mountain overhanging the clearing of their "Being" and observing the profane world which always sinks more into the reign of the quantity and materiality.

Do You plan to come to Lithuania someday? What do You know about our culture and its music?

BvS: I didn’t know well Lithuanian culture, but I would be delighted to  discover it from the indide on further times if I have the opportunity to travel in Lithuania one time but I hope for. I’m sure that your Eurasian climates, your nature and heathen and folk inheritance is very interesting and will speak to me. I need to discover more folkloric and heathen music coming from your regions. I really like Moon Far Away (Arkhangelsk, Russia) who according to me is one of better groups of the néofolk / heavenly scene at the moment.

Thank You.