World-renowned American death metal icons NILE return in 2024 with their highly-anticipated 10th onslaught, The Underworld Awaits Us All, out August 23 via Napalm Records. Boasting airtight technicality and unrelenting brutality, the new album pushes each member of NILE – founding mastermind/guitarist Karl Sanders, longtime drum master George Kollias, vocalist/guitarists Brian Kingsland and Zach Jeter, and bassist Dan Vadim Von – to their furthest extremes both in artistry and performance.
Once again produced and recorded at Sanders’ own Serpent Headed Studios in Greenville, South Carolina, the band returned to Vile Nilotic Rites engineer Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Whitechapel) for mixing and mastering.
In celebration of today’s announcement, NILE have dropped the album’s first new single, “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes”, alongside a new official music video. Topped by killer screams and gutturals, the track is a winding hacksaw of brutal tech-death injections citing the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
NILE’s Karl Sanders comments on the new track and video:
“’Chapter for not being Hung Upside Down’ is one of our favorite tracks on the new record. It’s a lot of fun to play, challenging and unpredictable, but with an infectiously brutal, unrestrained vibe that I am very certain will be a blast in the mosh pit during live shows.
We are super happy to be working with Tom Flynn for the video for this song – he is a visionary with insanely creative ideas and a really cool guy to work with. Very excited for people to see what he has been cooking up with this video.”
Facing the planet’s inevitable end with their diehard fans at their side, NILE waste absolutely no time with histrionics on The Underworld Awaits Us All, distilling their trademark Egyptology driven tempest down to its most streamlined essence. Charging into battle as its namesake depicts, “Stelae of Vultures” makes an immediate impact with dissonant guitar chords and supernatural drumming, teasing the auditory evisceration to come. Topped by impressive screams and gutturals, the track leads into “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes”, citing the Egyptian Book of the Dead’s 181st chapter. The album’s most succinct track, “To Strike with Secret Fang”, blends low-end punishment with blackened death metal inspiration, before album standouts such as “Naqada II Enter the Golden Age” and “Overlords of the Black Earth” breathe new life with thrash and fusion experimentation, as well as real human choirs – adding a raw element to the NILE fold. Each track soars as a technical tour-de-force – featuring career-defining extreme drumming from Kollias, as well as razor-sharp soloing from all three active guitarists and palpable bass exploration. A perfect example of this equation is pinnacle burner “Under the Curse of the One God”, combining sinister atmospherics with breakneck pacing and whirlwind, vicious riff acrobatics.
Throughout the remainder of its 11 pummeling tracks and intricate interludes, NILE masters full-tilt speed and ferocious musicality. 30 years into their heavy reign, The Underworld Awaits Us All proves that NILE is marching onward and undoubtedly upward, bleeding metal for their fandom for as long as the sands of time will allow.
Karl Sanders says about the album:
“We are very happy to be sharing with fans Nile’s 10th album. We worked overtime making this record as killer as we could – because we sincerely felt fans deserved our best efforts. The Underworld Awaits us All – and we will see you there.”
The Underworld Awaits Us All’s mind-bending art was once again envisioned and created by Michał ‘Xaay’ Loranc, with reference to the cycle of life and judgment at its end.
