Cannibal Holocaust by Necrophagia is one of those releases you either heard nothing about, or nothing good about. That should give you a head's up as to what this release is actually like. Usually, when something is known notoriously as a bad release, or is just never uttered on the lips of metal heads, there is a reason...
The title track, "Cannibal Holocaust", is a great song that fans of Necrophagia will just eat up. The song has a great production quality, is rather catchy in a brutal way, and is the stand out track of the release as well. The latter of that statement is due to the fact that the rest of the EP pretty much blows and has a terrible sound quality. "Burning Moon Sickness" is just awful. It sounds like it was recorded as it played from an old record player, with awful music that, near the end, just sounds like a bunch of hacks playing instruments they have never touched before, as well as sound out of tune. Yes, this, as well as "It Lives In The Woods" are meerly demo versions of the songs that appear on the Necrophagia album Holocausto De La Morte, which makes them nice for collector's purposes, but sound absolutely horrible in more then production quality, especially when compared to the studio versions. Sadly, this is exactly how the other tracks sound as well. The same can be said about the track "Chainsaw Lust", as well as that this track has the worst production quality on this EP, and it's not even a demo track!
The vocals on every song but "Cannibal Holocaust" are really the only saving grace, and even that is pushing it. "It Lives In The Woods" uses overmodulated distortion for gutteral effects, but most of the time just sounds like a raw recording that would best suit a black metal band. The Evil Dead film sample that starts off the song, as well as what sound like the haunting sound effects from the trees in the same film near the end when the vocalist shouts "Why not join us?" really work to set the tone of the song, but that out of tune sounding guitar is so prodominant and clashes so bad with the music much of the time that it's hard to fully enjoy this track. "Baphomet Rises", however, utilizes the poor quality perfectly, as this instrumental track is a very haunting piece of ambience with spoken words about Baphomet and his rise in the background.
The bonus video on this disc is a music video for the track "Cannibal Holocaust", which is as equally lame as the song "Burning Moon Sickness". It starts off with an introduction where Phil Anselmo sits on a couch with the vocalist and his wife as he explains his view of The Blair Witch Project being a rip off of the movie Cannibal Holocaust. The song then starts, and the video is nothing more then scenes from the film Cannibal Holocaust with scenes of the band members playing in the house of one of the members, we'll assume it to be Phil's. The end of the video even has a split second of a keyboard note from another song!
All in all this EP really isn't worth it unless you find it dirt cheap. The only songs worth checking out are "Cannibal Holocaust" and the ambient instrumental "Baphomet Rises" since that one could easily be used in a horror film in the background of a dramatic scene, primarily prior to someone dying or something along those lines. Everything else is pretty much garbage and not worth your time unless you are a die-hard fan looking for this for collector's purposes.
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