Originally written by Jeremy Garner
Hymen Holocaust is the solo project of Maurice “Cliteater” of take a wild guess, Cliteater. I’ve never been a big fan of Cliteater nor am I a big fan of most of the grind in the vein of Hymen Holocaust, but I’ve heard enough that I liked to understand that Necromance is nowhere near the top.
Slow, sludge ridden down tuned groove heavy goregrind with pitch shifted vocals is the basic formula for Hymen Holocaust. At least the drums don’t have that hollow sound that pisses me off so much but they still come off as extremely thin and weak. The guitar tone is overly saturated and thickly muddy, but is still discernable. The highlight of Hymen Holocaust however, is the impressive guttural pitch shifted vocal musings. Album Highlight “Self Mutilation”, “Virgin Surgeon”, the doomy “Giant Tits-Swollen Clits”, and “The Hymen Crusher” offer some sick groove and brutal slow downs, but Necromance is primarily a formulaic exercise in extremity that adds absolutely nothing to the overall style.
Hymen Holocaust mostly resembles bands like Bile and Rompepomp, but lacks the speed and intensity of labelmates Embalming Theatre or The Day That Everything Became Nothing who are jarringly different, but ultimately not that far removed from the style found on Necromance. There’s little surprise in finding the occasional similarity to Cliteater, but the similarities are kept few and far between. At least Hymen Holocaust doesn’t suffer from being another pointless side project.
After eight tracks spanning a half hour I’m left without a feeling of accomplishment or in any real interest to ever listen to these guys again. Necromance offers absolutely nothing that hasn’t been done before numerous times by bands with much more talent. There’s plenty out there who’ll eat this shit up like there’s no tomorrow, but with everything I’ve heard I’m hard pressed to reference Hymen Holocaust as a glowing example of all that’s right in the metal community.
