Album review: Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All

Nile have not built a career based on dramatic evolution from one record to the next. They do what they do – Egyptian-themed brutal/technical death metal – and they do it ridiculously well, each release having its own character while sticking to their guns, and their 10th full-length captures them at their best.

When you title a song – deep breath – Chapter For Not Being Hung Upside Down On A Stake In The Underworld And Made To Eat Feces By The Four Apes, you better back it up with some weight so no-one thinks you are taking the piss (or the faeces). And back it up they do, the blastbeat-ravaged second track upping the ante laid out by powerful opener Stelae Of Vultures. Said ante is in fact upped repeatedly, with the likes of Overlords Of The Black Earth a little easier to swallow despite its outright savagery, drums and guitars in kill mode, its delirious chanting creeping you out at the same time.

There are different flavours to sample – they swing off in the direction of explicitly non-metallic traditional Egyptian music occasionally, The Pentagrammathion Of Nephren-Ka most notably, while there is a little blackened death metal in the brief To Strike With Secret Fang. The eight-minute title-track is a monster, lurching and lunging all over the place, drenched in a warped atmosphere and every moment riveting.

Face it, Nile remain one of the defining bands of modern death metal, and deservedly so based on the evidence presented here. Long live the twisted maniacs.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Behemoth, Gatecreeper, Suffocation

The Underworld Awaits Us All is released on August 23 via Napalm