Bitterness – Hallowed Be Thy Game
Bitterness – Hallowed Be Thy Game
G.U.C.
Release Date: 06/02/26
Review by Jon Deaux
6.5/10
They’ve been doing this for 25 years. That’s the term of a mortgage! Meanwhile, while you’ve been moving up the property ladder or, more probably, sliding down it, Bitterness have been pounding out thrash metal in South Germany like hyper-violent cuckoo clocks. More than 300 gigs, no less. Bravery verging on self-torture, not unlike persisting through the World Cup matches involving England.
‘WWH8’ gets us underway—the World War Hate, no doubt. Palm-muted anger with double-bass drums attempting—the best they can—to stomp about like a panzer division with a beat. Run-of-the-mill thrashery, honestly; good, angry, the kind of thing your big brother listened to in an attempt to make himself sound deadly when obviously he was just a bit spotty.
Then ‘AMOK : KOMA’ which is rather ingenious—insanity and coma, reflections of each other, very. artistic, at least. The fact that the title is palindromic suggests thought has been involved, which with thrash represents a philosophy degree being found in a kebab house.
Third, ‘Hypochristian’. Ah, and how brave we are. Christian critique via a heavy metal band. How unimaginably dare we utter it. What’s next? A folksinger with a war rant? They embrace the blasphemy passionately enough that one can’t write it off as high-school pose affected to a percussive thrumming
‘High Sobriety’ includes a vocal performance by Tankard’s Gerre—it is beyond laughable considering that they are essentially the Wurzels of thrash: always drunk and singing drunkard songs. To think they’d get Gerre to contribute to ‘High Sobriety’ is to imagine Boris Johnson promoting honesty as an official policy. Pure German irony here.
Michael Goldschmidt brings solos for ‘High Sobriety’ as well as ‘Win-Windustry’. Apparently, Bitterness didn’t have enough hands to manage all the pointless wanking on guitars. Oh, let’s outsource solos much like we outsource happiness.
Track six is the title track, ‘Hallowed Be The Game’ because every thrash record needs a Mission Statement Song. I haven’t gotten to hear it yet, but I’m sure it features angry riffs, possibly some superdelayed chord-chugging, a lyrical theme involving corruption/manipulation.
‘Losing’ follows, which is refreshingly frank marketing. Most albums make the seventh track have some triumphant title. These chaps give up right at the start.
‘Magnum Innominandum’ is your instrumental, since God forbid we have vocals for each song. This is Latin for “great thing that must not be named,” which can be either pretentious Lovecraftian cosplay, as it were, or according to my GP my prostate.
They conclude with a Misfits cover of ‘Scream!’—because nothing screams “we’ve got nothing left” quite like finishing your album with a cover song. But in all seriousness, a Misfits cover is sort of the punk equivalent of a Beatles cover in that everybody’s done it, only a few people’s are probably any good, and the ones who did do it best were probably drunk.
This is a production by Christoph Brandes of Iguana Studios. He’s a guy that has worked with Necrophagist. That means he knows his stuff regarding technical brutality, even if he doesn’t know how to deliver it on time. The production is clean. You hear all that is going on. This may not always be a great idea regarding the lyrics.
“Hallowed Be The Game” is the classic thrash sound with the gloomy Death Metal and this Gothenburg melodic scene stuff – which is basically just the Swedish metallers learning about harmony and feeling like they’ve discovered the concept of the wheel. It’s thrash with emotions – emotional violence as opposed to just straight-up violence.
The artwork for this CD is apparently bloody and colorful enough, I’m sure-this guy’s done the covers for Municipal Waste and Havok. So you’re gonna be treated to something complex enough to keep your mind off the essential cruel truth: you’re now 45 years old and still purchasing thrash CDs.
Is it any good then? It is certainly competent, and that is what passes for a good car in 2026. It won’t win anyone any poetry prizes. It’ll suffice for thrash metal maniacs and angry Germans, but beyond that, Radiohead is sufficient.
TRACKLISTING:
01. WWH8
02. AMOK : KOMA
03. Hypochristian
04. High Sobriety
05. Win-Windustry
06. Hallowed Be The Game
07. Losing
08. Magnum Innominandum (Instrumental)
09. Scream (Misfits Cover)
LINKS:
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