bitterness exhumed - s/t

bitterness exhumed is one of my favourite german bands at the time. to me, they filled the empty void that war from a harlots mouth was leaving back when they were disbanding a couple of years ago. sure, bitterness exhumed doesn't play this chaotic mathcore reminiscent of botch and the like, but music is about feelings. and in a way, bitterness delivers the same sinister atmosphere that made me love the stuff of wfahm.

that being said, i always wanted to call at least one copy of all their releases on vinyl my own. some came easy, because i was right there to pre-order them and some, the self-titled 7" to be precise, were harder to come by. in this case, markus of per koro records and distro came to my rescue. he is also on discogs and when i was buying some stuff from his discogs offerings, he was industrious enough to ask if i wanted this one too.

he spotted it on my want list and i mean, come on, we can all imagine what the obvious answer was. indeed i wanted it plus the purchase was really on the cheap side. a win win situation, so to speak. 450 copies in total. 100 black copies and 250 clear copies of the 'normal' press, plus another 100 copies on gold with special hand-numbered sleeves. wooaaargh records. 2011. 

bitterness exhumed / optimist - split

bitterness exhumed's first full length release 'a place for many ghosts' was one of my favourite releaes from 2013. i really love their heavy mix of crust, doom, sludge and hardcore. so after that i was eager to get more stuff of them. in 2014 they released an e.p. on a twelve inch via demons run amok, called 'desperate and miserable'. unfortunately it couldn't really live up to 'a place...'.

so i was a little sceptical when beatdown hardwear announced a split together with optimist. of course i wasn't that sceptical to miss out on the pre-order of that thing. i was early in the game and so i snagged the most limited colour way. when it finally arrived last week and i dropped the needle on it, all my worries had been causelessly.

the doomier parts that were missing on 'deperate and miserable' are back and beside their noisy and fast outbreaks, the slower, ominous parts round out this bastard. great stuff! optimist on the other side is one hell of heavy old school death. does anyone out there remember the band end of days? they released a full length called 'dedicated to the extreme' in 2005 on alveran and century media.

optimist is kind of the follower band and do sound pretty similar, not least because of kevin otto's voice. skull crushing death metal in the vein of obituary. like the bitterness exhumed side better, but that's just my personal taste. optimist delivers! the presentation is lovely. nice matte card slip sleeve, big poster with all lyrics, the split on cd, a sweet obi strip and clear red vinyl with black smoke. all out of 100 copies. thumbs up! beatdown hardwear. 2015.

bitterness exhumed - desperate & miserable

the last bitterness exhumed record "a place of many ghosts" wa a real cracker. dark and fucked up hardcore punk with some metal hints a melodies for a really depressing sound scape. pure negativity that had its very own kind of subtle charm. to be exact this wasn't a real full length. some songs were re-recorded versions of former releases. on these re-recorded songs you could hear early stages of their song-writing skills and that left room for development. at that point i was really interested where new stuff would lead them.

that was almost exactly one year ago and here we finally are with "desperate and miserable". this release is an e.p. and consists of five new songs. i don't know. probably it needs more plays but to me this is just fast. don't get me wrong, fast is good and the songs are good, but sometimes a song needs some hooks to stuck in ones mind. some more of those desperate melody lines of "a place of many ghosts" would have done good to one or two songs of "desperate & miserable".

the fourth song "rat season" is that perfect mix of dissonant groove structures and mean melodies. you can listen to the whole thing on their bandcamp page. probably my expectations were too high because of the long time i had to wait for this. it was almost three month delayed because of the cover and b-side screening. and when you have to wait for a record that long, anticipation rises. but it's very solid never the less.

presentation wise i have nothing to complain about. "desperate & miserable" comes on quality clear blue vinyl, cut at 45 rounds per minute and with a wonderful screening on the b-side. hold up to the light you can see it in all its glory. there is also a bonus poster, which will always stay nicely put inside the sleeve, great cover art-work and the same custom stamp that was featured on the last record, can also be found here. it's just hard to be seen on the black dust sleeve. 300 copies made and hand numbered. demons run amok ent. 2014.

d.r.a.: bitterness exhumed, blkout

bitterness exhumed - a place of many ghosts

because of the great stuff this label was releasing in the past i can almost buy blindly from demons run amok entertainment. so when new releases get announced i always check them out. no exception with bitterness exhumed. before pre-orders went up one could check a video on youtube of their song ‘opposition’. i think it was mainly chosen because of the guest appearance of nico from war from a harlot’s mouth. bitterness exhumed play a bastard of metal and hardcore with lots of dissonances, breaks and dark melodies. pretty much in the vain of wfahm. i think this youtube video was supposed to appeal to wfahm fans. and what can i say – it worked out just well. i was hooked.

as soon as pre-orders were up i secured myself a copy of the special pre-order vinyl version. it comes with a simple fold around cover with different artwork, kind of an obi strip and a poster. first impression is amazing. the art of the fold around cover looks ace. even better than the actual cover artwork, which is pretty good too.

more cool details to come. first one is the wax seal on the back of the strip. the vinyl for the pre-orders is pressed on clear red with black splatter colour pattern. it matches the alternativ artwork and therefore is a good choice of colour. the inside of the alternate cover is stamped with a custom made bitterness exhumed stamp. thumbs up!

the normal cover and the printed dust sleeve are made of thick quality card. the artwork by sin eater is great, too. only the combination of the pre-order vinyl and the cover colours look a bit misplaced. ah well, can’t have it all.

the pre-order sleeve is numbered out of 100. i have #56. as i learned via discogs ‘a place of many ghosts’ is compilation of six new songs and five re-recorded songs from two ep’s. one is called ‘doomridden’ and was only available on cd and the other is a self-titled two-song-7”. i already looked out for the 7”. but it’s from 2011 i believe and only the black version available through the band’s big cartel. got to snag a coloured copy on ebay.

the music is very good for a debut as well. sometimes they just put riff after riff next to each other but on a high level for sure. already excited to see how this band will develop.

500 made. 100 for pre-order on clear red with black splatter vinyl. 400 on clear vinyl. demons run amok entertainment. 2013.

blkout - point of no return

a strange story that is linked to this release. it actually was released in the end of 2012. of course i checked a song back then because it’s d.r.a. after i did so i put blkout aside because i didn’t like the song (can't tell you which one it was). then at one of my regular visits at burnout record store, hamburg i listened to a bunch of records in the store. among them was blkout. i decided to listen to it again. i mean you know how it is, you have a whole bunch of new music and sometimes you get lost in the sheer flood of it. sometimes i just can’t rely on my first impression. i passed the intro and the tunes of the first song ‘something to remember’ kicked in. boy, that was actually pretty good. i just listened to that one song because more stuff was waiting in front of me. but i said to myself to get a copy from the label. i didn’t bought it right there because it was just the black version and i knew that there was a coloured run.

when i finally listened to it in whole, i just don’t know, i was kind of torn. the rest of the record isn’t definitely that what the first song was promising. the record reminds me a lot on fire and ice whom i don’t really like. on all accounts ‘point of no return’ isn’t a bad record but it’s that discontent feeling of expecting something different.

the presentation is pretty cool though. i love the artwork on that one. the choice of colours and that the white printings on the sleeve are of some glossy quality. the big fold out insert in poster size with all the lyrics is great, too. ‘point of no return’ was released by resist records for australia, six feet under records for north america and by demons run amok entertainment in europe. 300 on clear orange with black splatter vinyl and an unknown number of black copies. 2012.