By: Richard Maw
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released:23rd August, 2024
Label: Napalm Records
“The Underworld Awaits Us All” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1 Stelae of
Vultures
2 Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the
Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes
3 To Strike with Secret Fang
4 Naqada II Enter the Golden Age
5 The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka
6 Overlords of the Black Earth
7 Under the Curse of the One God
8 Doctrine of Last Things
9 True Gods of the Desert
10 The Underworld Awaits us All
11 Lament for the Destruction of Time
The Review:
Five years after “Vile
Nilotic Rites”, Karl Sanders (and George Kollias et. al.) blast back
with this capable and muscled offering. “Stelae of Vultures” may start
slowly, but it soon blasts off- or down- into the underworld which apparently
awaits all who listen to this album. The vocals are impossibly low, the drums
impossibly fast, the solos impossibly fluid the album overall is… improbably
good. It’s over twenty years since “In Their Darkened Shrines” and
thirty since Nile started out, but their mix
of brutal death metal, Egyptian themes and middle eastern musical motifs is
still as irresistible as ever.
“Vile Nilotic Rites”
was a fairly immediate listen- and so is “The Underworld Awaits Us All”.
It’s both familiar territory and wide enough in scope so as to bring the
listener in. Truthfully, I loved this one as soon as I heard it. It’s sonic
carnage in its most precise form and I still marvel at the musicianship on
EVERY Nile album. It’s simply
astonishing how far the boundaries of death metal have been pushed since the
likes of “Seven Churches” or “Scream Bloody Gore”
first dropped jaws in the metal world.
“Chapter for Not Being
Hung Upside Down On A Stake In The Underworld and Made To Eat Faeces By The Four Apes”
not only pads out this review’s length, but is also both a ridiculous song
title and an excellent track- lightning fast and with some hooks in the
riffage. Elsewhere, there is not much let up-“The Pentagrammathion of
Nephran Ka” may be a lovely instrumental interlude (echoing some of
Sanders’ solo work) but as soon as “Overlords of the Black Earth” kicks
in, the band simply lays waste to the listener. It’s fast, brutal and
effective, with a creeping slowness introduced after the frenetic first act.
The dissonance of “Under
The Curse of the One God” is different again, with excellent time changes
between very slow and hyper fast, plus a female backing vocal on the chorus and
a kind of middle eastern acoustic outro. I like the fact that Nile broaden their sound out on
each album, it brings unexpected moments and provides an aural break to the
metallic brutality. At 53 minutes in length, it’s not like this is an easy
listen, exactly, but it’s so uniformly good, that the playing time flies by. “Doctrine
of Last Things” may be buried in the track list running order, but it’s
strong- with experimental vocals and percussion- and as such represents another
worthwhile entry into the band’s catalogue.
The album manages to keep
my attention all the way through- “True Gods of the Desert” is just
superb; a slithering viper of a track that mixes clean vocals with slow tempos
to excellent effect. It’s only at the penultimate point of the record that the
title track is deployed and it is worthy of the honour bestowed upon it. Epic
in length, while musically, it displays most of what Nile can do- the insane speeds, the crazy time
changes and the excellent riffs. The production and mix, I note, are excellent.
Tight and punchy, crystal clear- exactly what music of this pedigree deserves.
By the time the album
finishes with the morose and atmospheric “Lament For The Destruction of Time”,
Nile have assuredly done what
they set out to do- they’ve made another excellent technical and brutal death
metal album; another classy entry into their discography. With Karl Sanders now
60 years of age, how much longer this can continue is anyone’s guess, but on
this evidence, the band are not ready to be interred into the pyramids yet.
Essential for all fans of the band and genre.
“The Underworld Awaits Us
All” is available HERE
