“Their ancient knowledge has become profane.”
Greenville, South Carolina’s technical death Egyptologists Nile return with yet another strong contender for album of the year in the form of The Underworld Awaits Us All. Back once again with their unique blend of intensely technical and crushingly filthy brutal death metal, the band are a part of the ruling class of death metal veterans who are still at the top of their game in the modern death metal scene. If The Underworld Awaits Us All as well as the band’s previous album, 2019’s Vile Nilotic Rites, is anything to go by, it is easy to see why – this is not just some the band’s best material to date, but some of the greatest death metal to date.
“Stelae of Vultures” launches Nile’s latest assault into life with a low and slow dissonant riff as George Kollias keeps time between flexing his uncontested drum muscles. The gradual nature doesn’t last long – as the old adage goes, there is a calm before the storm, and truly a storm it is. Comparable to a tornado, the band flick all cylinders on at once, with not one member holding back a single thing.
Kollias’ drumming is – in a word – incredible. He’s got a real ability to serve the song, but with incredibly technical parts, often containing the largest fills wherever he can that could easily sap all sense of musicality from the song in favour of showing off; but again, Kollias knows how not to lose this. Likewise, founding member, frontman and one of three guitarists in the band today Karl Sanders is accompanied by Brian Kingsland once again, as well as brand new addition Zach Jester.Inevitably top-notch guitar work is delivered, including blazing solos when suitable, and low, lurching, often almost sludgy drop-A riffs. Often, I was reminded of the doomier side of Bolt Thrower in cases of the latter, such as the main riffs on “Doctrine of the Last Things” and “True Gods of the Desert”.
As for the solos and lead guitar overall, the soaring lead parts Annihilation of the Wicked that are propelled by Kollias’ impossibly fast blast beats and double-kicks are today crossed with the face-melting sweeps and fast legato of Those Whom the Gods Detest performed with the unceasing inhuman precision of Origin.
“To Strike with Secret Fang” clocks in at barely two minutes and sees the band musically blend a bit of OSDM with Panzer-Division-era Marduk. Along with “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes” – yes, that is the real name of the single, and I am sorry to say that the lyrics do pertain to the title – “To Strike with Secret Fang” makes a fantastic pick as a single from The Underworld Awaits Us All.
“Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down…” is about average length for a song in 2024, and gives a good look into how the album sounds overall, and as a follow up “To Strike with Secret Fang” doesn’t give too much more away but brings all the unceasing aggression in a concise package that fans will inevitably be hoping for. The obviously ridiculous title of “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down…” has clearly also gone some way towards catching people’s attention, sporting over twice the streams “To Strike with Secret Fang” has on Spotify as of writing this. In that sense, it is again a clever decision that I would wager was deliberate.
Lyrically, the album is of course the band’s typical sort of thing – ancient Egyptian society and the religion therein, which would of course have been a big part of their society. The band seems to have a thing for songs about poop – other than the latter-mentioned snappily titled “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes”, there is also “Hittite Dung Incantation” from Those Whom the Gods Detest – however, it would appear that this was a fairly common facet of ancient Egyptian life rather than just a Nile thing. The song’s title is a reference to the Book of the Dead’s 181st chapter.
If Karl Sanders’ intention was to have listeners reading up on ancient Egyptian society, then it has well and truly worked – I found myself sat listening to track four on The Underworld Awaits Us All reading about the period in Egyptian society between 3600 – 3200 BC referred to as Naqada II – “ahh,” I said to myself, “so that’s what the title “Naqada II Enter the Golden Age” means!”. The lyrics are a great middle ground between the expected grisly death metal lyrics and the abstract of a dissertation on Ancient Egyptian society. Sanders’ delivery does what it has to on a rhythmic level very well, frantically reinforcing the brutality of what is being said. What the lyrics on The Underworld Awaits Us All do very well in all cases is convey why Nile chose ancient Egypt as their main theme – it was an incredibly rough time to live, particularly in Egypt where society lacked any semblance of human rights and that very much saw class equated with one’s worth; the higher your class, the more supremacy to your name. When you consider the power dynamic of standard death metal lyrics, it fits perfectly.
One thing is for certain – Nile are a band who are still very much in touch with their identity. You can really hear the same elements that made all of Nile’s classics what they are today still alive and well on The Underworld Awaits Us All. Nile, unlike many of their contemporaries, have really carved out their own sound within a genre that can often become rather one-note, particularly as the technicality is increased. The addition of traditional Egyptian and Middle Eastern instrumentation and musical motifs certainly is a big part of this and is a really unique approach to what can be a very traditionalist genre of music.
I must say that I do prefer how Nile goes about implementing these thematic elements into their music over how, say, Amon Amarth handle the themes of Vikings in their music – essentially, Nile don’t make it feel so much like a gimmick as can so often be the case with bands like these, and so it doesn’t become so tiring. Tracks like “The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka” are simple but effective ways to immerse (rather than inform) the listener. The track is a short solo instrumental track featuring a string instrument called the glissantar at the forefront with an extremely subtle airy, droning synth filling the air behind it. Gong hits fittingly punctuate the ends of most sections and further still help to effectively build the atmosphere of the ancient Egyptian desert that the band strive to convey. Glissentar manufacturer Godin attest the instrument “is still used predominantly in Egypt and Armenia” and is inspired by the Oud, an eleven string ancestor of the mandolin. It is little touches such as the inclusion of instruments like this that really sells Nile’s music on a thematic level.
I can’t not mention the ending of “Under the Curse of the One God”, where – just as you think the song is over – the band bring it back as what sounds like a war march complete with African drums, chants, and super ominous droning horns. Such a decision, again, just sells the band’s relation to ancient Egypt effortlessly.
Of the glissentar – initially, I noted the rather harsh picking sound, but having listened to a few other recordings of the instrument, it would appear that it is merely a part of the sound of the glissentar. That said, listeners on headphones may still have a hard time listening to this one for this reason. Aside from this, the band made the smart decision to work once again with Vile Nilotic Rites mix and mastering engineer Mark Lewis, with Sanders handing the recording of the album in his personal studio Serpent Headed Studios. Sanders has done a great job recording the album, particularly given his high level of involvement with the record.
Lewis delivers mixes that are a high-level example of what a modern metal album should sound like. If you had a mix/mastering engineer who specialised in reggae and dub but wanted to start working with metal bands, this would be the album to give them as a reference. Mark Lewis knows how to subtly use EQ, reverbs, and other audio tools to contribute towards an excellent bigger picture. He clearly knows when to use reverb, for example, stylistically (as often is the case on The Underworld Awaits Us All,) vs. when to use it for space or moving elements back to make others pop. That said, the reverb used for Kollias’ toms often sounds very digital, something which might suit a genre like goth, but not so much modern metal drums. However, this is but nitpicking, with it being very clear that Lewis is clearly familiar with the sound of modern metal, understanding well what he is working towards.
Lewis also uses brickwall compression effectively to further the aggression of the music – there is a reason why an acoustic track like the latter-mentioned “The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka” has more dynamic range than any of the full-band death metal affairs on the album – that said, it is of course still drenched in compression, and I think part of my previously mentioned gripe with “The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka” is likely just the result of the compression exacerbating every small movement in the recording, but the song is allowed just a little more room to breathe than, say, “Under the Curse of the One God”.
Title track “The Underworld Awaits Us All” epitomises Nile completely, strongly reminding me of how the band sounded on Annihilation of the Wicked all the way back in 2005. The band really do share the part of extreme metal they pull the dissonance of their riffing from with black metal like 1349 and, as I mentioned previously, Marduk. I’d go as far as to namedrop this common ancestor as Celtic Frost, something I got from Nile often across The Underworld Awaits Us All. The huge guitar battle between two of the three guitarists the band currently sports is almost what Tom G Warrior would have sounded like if he had been a more technically proficient guitar player, and there is a warballing orchestral female vocal on this and a few of the other tracks across this album that remind me heavily of parts of To Mega Therion. Moreover, the sometimes chromatic power chord sequences and overall approach to structuring the songs brings to mind the common characteristics and components of Celtic Frost.
The album closes with “Lament for the Destruction of Time”, an instrumental track that takes on a bit more of that sludgy, doomy, The IVth Crusade Bolt Thrower I mentioned earlier. Likewise, the typically Nile soaring guitar solo over the top makes this an excellent track to end the album on, serving almost as credits-roll music for the end of the album. I see it also as the band firmly choosing to represent Nile as a concept and being proud of their identity.
To conclude, Nile’s latest effort The Underworld Awaits Us All will not disappoint Nile fans and general death metal listeners alike. If this was your first Nile album, it would be just as good a starting point as a certified classic like Annihilation of the Wicked from almost 20 years ago, but that is not to say the band have not evolved since then – in fact, the band are just enough in touch with their identity and the current death metal landscape, for example, in terms of standards of production, and The Underworld Awaits Us All is gleaming proof of this fact. Nile reminds us over 11 masterfully crafted tracks how themed metal albums should work – rather than bombarding the listener with a ton of information about a historical topic in a tacky and quickly tiring way, the band opts to incorporate elements of the folk music of the region their music is discussing the history of alongside the most technical as well as brutal metal of the year so far. Moreover, though it is incredibly technical, The Underworld Awaits Us All is still undeniably musical. Frankly, the band are a well-oiled machine, with their current five members serving as the moving parts that make the whole. George Kollias’ drumming is the most technically proficient of our time, and serves the engine behind the music of Nile. He gives the songs such motion that they would lack without him. Dan Vadim Von fills out the low end excellently on bass, bridging the gap between Kollias and the trio guitar onslaught fronted by guitarist/lead vocalist and producer Karl Sanders in a fashion that should be exemplary to all bassists everywhere. In fact, The Underworld Awaits Us All should influence all death metal bands today in their own practises. Coming away from The Underworld Awaits Us All, listeners, particularly those that themselves are also musicians, will feel lucky to be alive at the same time as the sheer musical genius behind Nile.
9/10
The Underworld Awaits Us All releases on the 23rd August through Napalm Records and can be pre-ordered here.