December 19: Nile - Utterances of the Crawling Dead
Nile - Utterances of the Crawling Dead from the album Those Whom the Gods Detest
Spotify link: http://open.spotify.com/track/2vYznzc0S0KAADPw9cUnA5
To those unfamiliar to Nile, they are a technical death metal band with inspirations from the ancient Egypt. I remember discovering Nile before seeing them at the Hole-in-the-Sky Festival here in Bergen, and remember that their extreme expression, and the gig was about the most extreme thing I’ve ever seen, George Kollias sure as something. After the gig I really got into them, especially Annihilation of the Wicked and In Their Darkened Shrines were two of the records I’ve played a lot in my life. The follow up to AotW, Ithyphallic was maybe not all that great, and that’s why I had lowered my expectations a bit when they released Those Whom the Gods Detest this autumn. But ow boy, did they deliver.
While Ithyphallic was quite the nut to figure out, Those Whom the Gods Detest has gone a bit back to basics, it’s still as extreme as it gets, but they focus more on killer riffs, and repeats them a bit, which makes it easier to get into their songs. Fun fact: The drums are engineered by Erik Rutan, and they sound damn amazing. And George Kollias is still one of my favorite extrem metal drummers.
The song I’ve selected is Utterances of the Crawling Dead, a track containing those killer riffs, and the song actually is quite groovy, something which is tough to do at higher tempoes. But please check out the rest of the album as well, the opening track Kafir is .. amazing, 4th Arra of Dagon (check out the last third), Permitting … and more.