{"id":459039,"date":"2026-02-07T04:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459039\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T04:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:37:09","slug":"bitterness-hallowed-be-the-game-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/459039\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitterness – Hallowed Be the Game Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Thrash metal trio Bitterness has been riffing around Germany\u2019s underground metal scene since 2002. And despite a twenty-plus-year career spent in a state of sustained anonymity, these thrashers three are ready to throw down their eighth full-length odyssey, Hallowed Be the Game. Marching under the thrash banner in a country that birthed not only the Big Teutonic 4, (Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, and Tankard) but some very endearing second-tier bands (Exumer, Holy Moses, Paradox, and Living Death) takes guts and persistence. Luckily, Bitterness has a little bit of both. Between Megadeth hitting number 1 on the Billboard 200 for the first time with its eponymous swan song and Kreator releasing an album I CANNOT get out of my earholes, thrash shone brightly in January. Does Bitterness possess the skill and fortitude necessary to carry that light into the desolate, hopeless darkness of February?<\/p>\n

Bitterness plays mid-level neothrash that neither raises nor furrows brows, historically straddling the fence between At the Gates-style melodeath and 2000s-era Kreator-core. Yet, Bitterness has leaned further into its thrashy side since introducing a mascot\u2014enter blindfolded Jesus\u2014on the cover of 2015\u2019s Ressurexodus, and who appears here looking strikingly like Snake Plissken. Frank Urschler\u2019s riffs are plentiful, firing primarily at speeds either breakneck (\u201cWWH8,\u201d \u201cHallowed Be the Game\u201d) or breakneck (\u201cHypochristianity\u201d), and his vocals\u2014a hybrid blend of Petrozza (Kreator), Souza (Exodus), and Ellsworth (Overkill)\u2014fit what Bitterness is doing well. Andreas Kiechle blisters the skins effectively enough to keep things on track, while Marcel Konz\u2019s prominently plucked bass lines round out the rhythm section. Thrash\u2019s status quo and the AMG safety counter have nothing to fear from Bitterness. And yet Hallowed Be the Game isn\u2019t completely devoid of enjoyable moments, despite being weighed down by bloat and victimized by its own overt juvenilia.<\/p>\n

I respect that Bitterness seems content to exist on the fringe of its chosen scene, with the very front half heavy Hallowed Be the Game\u2014as any eighth offering might\u2014standing as proof they\u2019ll not go gently into any good night. With the very Kreatoric one-two punch of the opening salvo (\u201cWWH8,\u201d \u201cAMOK:KOMA\u201d), Bitterness proves that well-executed riffage can still overcome a dearth of originality: this is also where I find Urschler vocalizing at his most Petrozza-like. And then, in an attempt to bring Teutonic legitimacy to these proceedings, I appreciated the vocal contributions of Tankard\u2019s very own Andreas \u201cGerre\u201d Geremia to \u201cHigh Sobriety\u201d about as much as \u201cHypochristianity\u201d took me back to Pleasures of the Flesh-era Exodus. To be certain, Urschler and company execute their ABC\u2019s and capably deliver on the fundamental tenets of thrash: crack beer, bang head. Despite this, a couple of things really held the album back for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hallowed Be the Game loses most of its muscle mass from fatty back half disease and a we-tried-too-hard style of juvenile delinquency. With a runtime exceeding forty-three minutes, Bitterness could have easily cut the last 10 and left us with a more manageable slab of pseudo-enjoyable, albeit pedestrian, thrash metal. Instead, the nearly eight-minute instrumental \u201cMagnum Innominandum,\u201d its leaden pace and lack of dynamic variability rendering it perfunctory and the even more unnecessary cover of the Graves-era Misfits song \u201cScream!\u201d remained almost as padding, bringing Hallowed Be the Game to a very underwhelming close. Combine those two, parting flop shots alongside the fact that nearly every song title is a somewhat childish play on words, and the whole Game just felt silly. And not in a good way, as I\u2019d expect from more light-hearted bands like Tankard, Municipal Waste, and others of that ilk.<\/p>\n

Neither particularly good nor bad, Hallowed Be the Game is one of those albums that just is, and assuredly isn\u2019t the breakthrough Bitterness may have been hoping for. It\u2019s like that girl you met at Niagara Falls one weekend in college, fun to hang with for a few days, but definitely nothing serious. Ultimately, Bitterness failed to pique my interest beyond writing this review. Die-hard thrashers may get a few miles out of Hallowed Be the Game, but as for me, I\u2019m going to spin Kreator again.<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.5\/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: G.U.C.<\/a>
Websites: Bandcamp<\/a> | Facebook<\/a> | Instagram<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: February 6th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:\n<\/p>\n