Feeding Frenzy: Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All

Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All

Release Date: 23rd August 2024||Genre: Technical death metal||Label: Napalm Records

And the award to most poetic song title goes to…

Distilling their trademark Egyptology, South Carolina’s Nile head back to Karl Sanders‘ own Serpent Headed Studios and waste absolutely no time with histrionics. So, let’s crack on too, there’s a lot to offload. First off, it’s been a while. Five years in fact. That’s a lot in itself, so, like many, I was waiting with bated breath to hear that first growl and after a very long thirty seconds, I won’t lie, felt a bit foolish… “I Eannatum of Lagash…!!!” packing a punch straight off with opening track Stelae of Vultures and “teasing the auditory evisceration to come.” Phew. Secondly, there’s been a few line-up changes; always gets the fans a bit tetchy. Fact: nothing to worry about here.

As the tagline suggests, in true Nile-style, the track list is a feast for the imagination. Second track, Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes blasts fast, death-tech guitars with heavy beats whilst simultaneously citing the Egyptian Book of the Dead‘s 181st chapter – if the title wasn’t enough for fans to read up on! The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka provides a short instrumental interlude. A midway, salty gasp if ever played live in entirety, playfully reminiscent of late, muggy Cairene night.

A very real, almost looming atmosphere befalls the album as a whole. Under the Curse of the One God fuses sinister and eerie depths with carefully erratic, razor-sharp riffs. The slow and  somnolent mist, asphyxiated, pummeled into submission, as the sheer breakneck speed the album has us strapped in for guides us mercilessly. Title track, The Underworld Awaits Us All, unquestionably prevails in relating to the world’s current events to that of old. An indicative tale that humanity loathes to learn from.

A neck wrecking catapult into the familiar but with everything we love, Nile continue to instigate evolution, and revolution! This is not just one of the best executed Nile albums in (relatively) recent years, this is up there amongst all death metal albums of the past decade or so.

A+ No one should be without.
AVZD