Label - Napalm Records
Release Date - 23rd August 2024
Words - Tony Bliss
With AT LEAST three essential records under their scarab adorned belts, Nile’s three-decade and counting career has been typified by some of the most wildly imaginative and bone-crunching death metal ever magicked up by human minds - band mastermind Karl Sanders remains unmatched both in terms of riffing prowess and conceptual ingenuity. With that being said, a new batch of tunes is always reason to celebrate and salivate. Yet, it’s without hyperbole to say that The Underworld Awaits Us All is an almost shocking display of strength and may rival (whisper it) anything contained in the band's discography to date - it’s that absurdly good.
At surface level, little has changed here, but it’s clear from the off that this is the Americans operating at the very peak of their powers. Succinct cuts such as recent single ‘To Strike with Secret Fang’ and (deep breath) ‘Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes’ are deeply satisfying bursts of myopic terror, destructive and infectious in equal measure. However, it’s as the album progresses and those trademark Nile epics begin to unfurl that they define the true essence of their craft, with the fearsome duo of ‘True Gods of the Desert’ and the title track a deliciously expanse sixteen minutes - the former built on a titanic central groove and calling to mind Morbid Angel at their most gruesome and muscular, whilst the latter is a flat out labyrinth of riffs, an extended display of extreme metal superiority which basks in its own numerous proggy stylistic advances (operatic female vocals and all). Closing instrumental ‘Lament for the Destruction of Time’ rounds things off beautifully, some pitch-perfect soloing and yet more choral singing channelled through an almost doom metal framework, yet with all the cinematic pizazz and arcane atmosphere still unique to these veterans.
It’s 2024 and death metal is in ridiculously good health, but make no mistake - Nile are still the absolute kings of this shit.
9/10
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