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.
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.
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”, a winding hacksaw of brutal
tech-death 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.