Nile

Death on the Nile was Agatha Christie's classic 1937 whodunit novel (by coincidence she would later pen At Bertram's Hotel...). She couldn't have known how apt the title would become, for the American band Nile now are one of death metal's brightest lights. And unlike her book, Nile don't use Egypt as a mere backdrop, preferring to situate their ridiculously technical extreme metal in that cradle of ancient civilization.

The Egyptology angle comes care of Nile founder and front man Karl Sanders, who is something of an amateur expert on the subject. Sanders (who co-formed the band in 1993) studies ancient texts and hieroglyphics to glean his lyrical themes. This thread has run throughout all four Nile albums, but reaches its zenith on the recent Annihilation of the Wicked (Relapse Records). Thematically, this is in the same realm as Iron Maiden’s genre-defining 1984 album Powerslave, which drew on Egyptian themes, and Iced Earth, who delve deeply into American and military history.

The lyrics, which otherwise could be mistaken for common-or-garden death metal cliché if you didn't know the back-story, are complimented by extensive sleeve notes. A taster -"'Cast Down the Heretic' concerns the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt from 1379 to 1362 B.C. The son of Amenophis III and Tiye, Amenophis IV changed his name to Akhenaten (which most likely means 'Servant of the Aten') in Year 5 of his reign indicating his allegiance to Aten (a creator god symbolized by the sun's disc)."

And so on and so forth... potentially leaving you thinking that if you wanted a history lesson you'd go back and repeat the fifth form for a third time. On the other hand, Egypt is fucking interesting, and this is certainly more vivifying than the usual deathly utterances. That is, unintelligible grunts won't get you far in life (which is kind of the point, this being death metal and all), and it's good to see someone exploding the envelope.

Good to see, and better to hear, because it's musically that Nile really impress. Death metal has always been a musical form that has attracted technical virtuosity, but this is getting out of hand. Nile are simply insane, knowing no boundaries, and virtually erasing all that has come before by absorbing it and processing it in new and vital ways. They redefine the death genre in the same way that Morbid Angel did 15 odd years ago, breathing new life into a moribund idea.

When Nile were touring with Morbid Angel on the back of 1998's debut album Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka, Karl Sanders claimed that his band played "every single note as if it were going to be our last, and give every bit of strength we have within us every time we play." This is still the case on Annihilation of the Wicked, an album that spirals through monumental shifts of brutality and beauty, intensity and calm, the artistic and the arcane.

Sanders, joined here by fellow guitarist/vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade and drumming superhuman George Kollias, integrates Middle Eastern modalities and instrumentation into Nile's music. This is not overt in a tokenistic, look-we're-all-world-music-now kind of way, but in subtle and appropriate ways. There's an undeniable symphonic aspect to Nile's sound, wrought from Sander's obsessive meddling with the musical structures.

Ultimately though Annihilation of the Wicked offers a vicious assault on the senses, Nile’s main weapons being unbridled speed and proficiency. The counterpoint guitar work is astounding, ranging from distended chugging riffs to hyper-speed arpeggiation, mental thrash-outs to whammy-bar whackery. Kollias’ blast beats and syncopation put him right up with the best extreme metal skins men.

Nile’s musicianship has seen them recognized by the cognoscenti of the underground music media, heralding the band as the saviors of the death metal world. Mention must also be made of producer Neil Kernon, who has done a sterling job of capturing Nile’s twisted mayhem with clarity and depth, no easy task with music this unrelenting.

And, as with all Relapse Records releases, the packaging is stunning. This is an aspect that many labels sadly ignore. Relapse always have fantastic artwork that fits with the overriding theme of the music within. While it’s obviously not the most important thing, even more so with the digital realm stealing market share from hard media, it’s good to see a label that indulge their artists creative impulses across the entire spectrum.

Which of course suits a band like Nile perfectly. They’ve been called the Iron Maiden of death metal, and they definitely have the same kind of combination of image and substance that Maiden had in their heyday. Which means if you’re into extreme metal of any kind, then you owe it to yourself to check out this album.


Top 5
The Hurt Process – A Heartbeat Behind
Kraftwerk – Minimum Maximum
Meshuggah – Catch 33
Autechre – Untilted
Rhythm and Sound – See Mi Yah

Classic:
Sugar - Beaster

Napalm Death

You know when you've been Napalmed. There's no other act on the planet like Napalm Death, and since their inception in Birmingham in the mid-1980s, their influence has marked the metal landscape like the black scar left by the flaming gas that is their namesake. They've spawned a legion of imitators, and their own family tree reads like a who's who of English metal of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

That's almost 20 years of raw aggression and fearless agitating. And over that period the band have lost little of their blinding intensity or commitment to the cause. While the recent album The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code doesn't have quite the same ground zero flash of their pioneering early recordings, it certainly kicks the asses of many of the bands younger peers. It's hard to believe in an era when retrospective navel gazing and sterile nostalgia are de rigueur, that a band of this age are still forging ahead on the same fuel that got them started.

Napalm Death's earliest albums, 1987's Scum and 1988's From Enslavement to Obliteration (both Earache Records) were insane speed fests that single handedly birthed the grindcore movement. They featured tracks that were but a few seconds long, with anything longer than a few minutes being a virtual epic. Like the Ramones, Hüsker Dü, or the Jesus and Mary Chain live, they knew that impact was everything. Armed with this, they bludgeoned their audiences into willing, ecstatic submission in short bursts of utter mayhem.

Members of Napalm Death during the early period went on to form such outfits as Cathedral (Lee Dorrian), Carcass (Bill Steer), Godflesh (Justin Broadrick, Nik Bullen), Scorn (Mick Harris). Harris, Broadrick and Bullen featured on the first side of Scum, while for the second, Harris was joined by Steer, Dorrian and Jim Whitely. The personnel changes continued into the early ‘90s, when the more secure line-up of bassist Shane Embury, vocalist Barney Greenway, drummer Danny Herrara, and guitarists Jesse Pintado and Mitch Harris.

This five-piece configuration recorded some classic albums during the mid-90s, such as Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994) and Diatribes (1996). These not only refined the extreme left-wing socio-political polemic, but also broadened the sound palette, taking in more colours than sheer white noise. "We've been taking influences from everywhere, and using them to get a more mature sound," stated Shane Embury. "We're into what bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Jane's Addiction do with their songs, and we draw on that and just make it a lot heavier." This saw the band bring more variation into their music in terms of rhythm, tempo and texture, realising that strategic changes made the extremes appear more extreme.
Welding their trademark intensity to a richer sonic sensibility has seen Napalm Death remain a vital power in the metal scene, and they're now one of the scene’s elders, admired for their unbending commitment. The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code fits comfortably into this cannon, with such anthems as 'Pay For The Privilege of Breathing', 'Our Pain Is Their Power', and 'Instruments of Persuasion'.
Opener 'Silence Is Deafening' is a clarion call to any metal practitioners who have been complacently waiting for something to happen. All the signifiers are present - the guttural, lung-blasting vocals, incorrigible blastbeats, vicious distorted low end, and manic grind riffing giving way to canyon-esque grooves. Even with just one guitarist (Pintado is no longer around) the aural assault cannot fail to get the adrenaline going. And even though Napalm Death have been playing a similar tune for the better part of two decades, it still sounds fresh. Maybe that's because the original idea was so good, or maybe it's because most of their present day contemporaries struggle to keep up.
There are cameos from Jello Biafra (‘The Great and the Good’), Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta (‘Instruments of Persuasion’, ‘Sold Short’), and Carcass vocalist Jeff Walker (‘Pledge Yourself to You’). Apart from Biafra these collaborations don’t really add much, but indicate the respect the band has.
A related project worth a listen is Bill Steer’s latest project, Firebird. Their latest opus, 2003’s No.3 (Steamhammer) is a world away from Napalm Death or Carcass, being firmly rooted in heavy 1970s blues, ala Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, even Band of Gypsies. This is raw and authentic, the kind of nostalgia trip worth wallowing in.

Top 5
Comeback Kid – Wake The Dead
Fantômas – Suspended Animation
Throwdown - Vendetta
Guy Strazz – Passionfruit
Robert Plant – Mighty Rearranger

Classic
Jesus and Mary Chain – Automatic