Nile The Underworld Awaits Us All

Today is a special day because we’re talking about one of the coolest, most consistent death metal bands in existence, and certainly the best Egyptological death metal band on this planet. This is the longest we’ve gone without new Nile. It’s been about as long as the time from the rule of ancient Egypt to today, give or take a few years, or at least that’s how it feels. It’s always worth waiting for something good though, and that’s exactly what the band have delivered this time with The Underworld Awaits Us All.

If y’all read my Contrarian review, you know I lamented the loss of George Kollias’ involvement with that band; a striking, gaping hole that really showed in the overall quality and enjoyment of their work. Hearing a new Nile album where he’s not only still involved, but performing like he’s still a hungry young musician has been a salve for the soul. As always, it’s great to reconnect with Karl Sanders as the mastermind and lead writer of the group, him providing the narration for our trip back to B.C. Egypt in addition to being one of three guitarists alongside Brian Kingsland and Zach Jeter, the latter being a newcomer, as is bassist Dan Vadim Von who’s made a name for himself as a current guitarist for Morbid Angel.

It’s long been a tradition for Nile to bless us with remarkably long titles for certain songs. “Libation Unto the Shades Who Lurk In the Shadows of the Temple of Anhur” from Black Seeds of Vengeance is a wonderful instrumental, “Papyrus Containing the Spell to Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks from He Who Is in the Water” from Ithyphallic is one of the first songs I heard from Nile, but this new one is one of the best yet: “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld And Made to Eat Feces By the Four Apes”. That’s a mood, very relatable. It’s more than a wild title too - not only is it one of the more technical and fast songs on this album, but I love the playfulness that happens between the vocals and instrumentation. When Sanders bellows “gods of the earth”, a terrestrial mini-solo with tremolo plays; he screams “gods of the sky”, a soaring, finger-twister of a lead rips out; he belches “gods of the underworld”, it’s met with a dramatic, apocalyptic, morbid moan of a solo.

I absolutely love the new choral vocals on this album. Songs like “Naqada II Enter The Golden Age” and “Under the Curse of the One God” are elevated exponentially by their relatively reserved implementation so they accent certain huge lines like “we’ve got to cleanse the black earth” and “under the curse of the one god” respectively. I’m reminded of some of Devin Townsend’s best work when I hear these vocals. It’s transcendental shit and something I hope they work with in the future because it made all the difference in standing out and memorability.

“Doctrine of Last Things” and “True Gods of the Desert” are palpable with groove and truly awesome writing where Nile slow things down as they’re wont to do from album to album. A big strength of the band throughout the years has been their ability to take a more deliberate and doomed approach to their sound without losing the technicality or weight they always command. I’m sure Kollias is thankful for the small break too, though he’s no slouch during these moments, still pounding out those turbo double bass kicks and flourishing fills while Sanders growls exposition on the sandblasted brutality of the ancient desert. The ethereal choral singing of the lyrics “emboldened by dusk, shunning the light of Ra” is one of the most empowered moments on this whole record.

Five years away did Nile some good. Recency bias be damned, The Underworld Awaits Us All is a high point for the band who are now 30 fucking years into this project with nary a single miss, only good and great projects among their sacred texts. Their cleaner production choices for recent albums have made their music hit harder too. This is mostly up to taste, but it’s been great to see the band expand - not everything needs to sound like it was recorded in a pharaoh’s tomb. My only admittedly nitpicky critique is that, despite obviously strong moments, the album’s first half is slightly weaker than the back half, and I do miss the folk elements being more widely dispersed throughout the album and the huge orchestration that used to be a minor highlight in previous albums.

Bottom Line: Nile’s prevailing dominance over time, seemingly getting stronger with age, is something that needs to be studied eventually. The Underworld Awaits Us All is a profoundly strong entry in their decades-long reign, producing some of my favorite songs from them ever, in addition to a loopable body of work that mimics the cyclical nature of life and death itself. The gods may try to impose their wills on us, but Nile impose their brutal technicality with an ease that only comes with being a veteran of the game for so long - who will you follow into war?