Review Summary: It’s the sound of the underground, the beat of the drum goes *machine gun noises*
Nile’s ability of keeping their sound reliably abrasive, technical and hard-hitting over the years has been quite extraordinary. Thematically unique and instantly recognisable, their head-wobbling percussive pitter-patters, blistering solos and obsession with Ancient Egypt has seen them chisel out a niche that they have gently prodded the boundaries of for nigh on thirty years now.
The Underworld Awaits Us All is again a further development of this mould, demonstrating their usual creative focus, but expanding upon the groundwork lain by previous album
Vile Nilotic Rights in a slightly more genre-typical, but no less compelling way. The 5 year gap between albums clearly hasn’t allowed enough time for complacency to set in, as a sharper sense of single-minded musicality and a cleaner, but similarly impactful production style threads its way through
Underworld like a barbed-wire suture. It’s slightly less cacophonous than the band’s best work; the outfit have noted their newfound focus on sheer barbarism over the usual culture-appropriate orchestral additions. Nonetheless, the result is a record that feels tighter overall, deftly mixing the instruments in a way that retains the prominent historical influence within the songwriting, but also adding in a glossy clarity to an (even) heavier-handed sonic texture. It’s imposing and grand, polished up with a rich, white-knuckle aesthetic that feels quintessentially ‘Nile’, only streamlined.
Very much in-step with the rest of Nile’s discography,
Underworld is a breakneck slab of death metal with a consistently oppressive edge thanks to the huge sound and intimidatingly dark songwriting. Massive, barraging riffs and eyebrow-raisingly technical solos buff the experience, and it’s all shackled together by Karl Sanders’ monstrous, iconically guttural vocals. Now 61, his devastating ability is incredibly impressive, and despite the general one-dimensionality of his delivery, it remains the ideal complement to the imagery of sand-buried tombs, scorching deserts, ancient gods and somewhat unpleasant torture. The music is also well balanced with these elements, with multifaceted, Eastern-influenced songwriting emblematic of the songs’ core conceits, and perfectly suited to the authority of Sanders’ gargling through his throatful of concrete. ‘To Strike With Secret Fang’ and ‘Overlords of the Black Earth’, exemplify such rollercoaster re-imaginings of traditional Egyptian musicality, with mildly droning, lumbering riffs that flit between technically impressive and monstrously nasty in an instant. ‘Overlords’, with its lyrical focus on an undead afterlife, feels well-served by its raucous riff and hurricane drums, crafting an appropriate feeling of foreboding, tomb-shattering ascendancy. Further, it illustrates Nile’s desire to focus on more typical metal tropes, being fittingly themed for the genre, and unyieldingly savage from beginning to end.
The guitar work on tracks like ‘True Gods of the Desert’ and the title track encapsulate the labyrinthine claustrophobia and vast spectacle so associated with the tombs and plains of Egypt; cavernous, unforgiving, and soul-shaking. The hand-in-hand synergy between all aspects of their sound is something Nile have always been proficient at, but the dialled-in brutality of
Underworld feels so fitting when paired with the savage landscapes or the intimidating deities Nile wish to channel. The violently rapid tempo-switching riff on ‘Naqada II Enter The Golden Age’, an album highlight, feels like a convergence of the band’s styles from both their early and more recent output, managing to be majestic and vicious, but gratifyingly digestible. Granted, despite the change in approach to writing, the musical content throughout the album is hardly breaking new ground for the outfit, but it’s certainly pleasant to see that the efficiency they’ve spent their career honing has been maintained to such a high standard even when the style is slightly shaken up. There’s an impressive level of fidelity within the production of
Underground- one which serves the intricacies of the individual pieces without dampening the energy too harshly. The drums sit front and centre with the guitars roaring behind them, and the production ensures both components weave together like vines ensnaring one another; each strand tightly linked, but without strangling the other. This is very much the distillation of the old-and-new school merging, and it feels not only thoroughly modern in effect, but classic in its songwriting and true to the band’s ethos.
Nile’s style has pretty much been embalmed and mummified at this point; lovingly preserved, and very deserving of the legendary status the scene has bestowed upon them.
The Underworld Awaits Us All is a real pleasure to experience, both in terms of seeing the group return, and for the high standard of the LP itself. The unrelenting ferocity, the entertaining subject matter, the pleasingly diverse mix of old school death metal and modern production… it’s almost uniform in how superbly crafted it is. The record does lose some steam around the three-quarter mark- something of an unfortunate trademark for the band at this point- but this is only because the rest of the album is so strong by comparison. It’s to be expected though; after nearly an hour of worshipping the dead, being educated about the afterlife and then forced to eat feces, lethargy is bound to kick in. Regardless, the release remains exceptionally strong both in sound and content, absolutely stuffed full of fiery rage, dynamic musical asides and brain-rattling vocals. As Nile’s tenth album, it’s both better than and exactly what you expect, eclipsing their most recent releases and standing out as their best work since
Those Whom The Gods Detest.
