Reviewed - 08/15/05

Annihilation of the Wicked
[Relapse Records]

I’ve never been a rabid Nile fan. I own a few of their albums and seen them live a few times. I’ve always found their Egyptian themes quite ambitious, if not too ambitious for death metal and their music to push the envelope of intensity. While I enjoyed both “Black Seeds of Vengeance” and “In Their Darkened Shrines,” I found the albums to be quite hard to listen all the way through with out taking Dramamine. The undulant riffing and unrelenting blast beats would start to annoy after a while. “Annihilation of the Wicked,” however, has made my jaw slack in sheer astonishment.

Album opener, “Dusk Falls...” is a majestic instrumental that just exudes everything Egyptian and before I can envision the Pyramids at twilight, “Cast Down the Heretic” swarms like a plague of locust with both fury and resolve. Nile has never sounded this good to my ears and the dueling solos on the aforementioned track are nothing short from awe-inspiring. Perhaps I missed something on the previous releases, but now I can hear many textures and layers that were previous lost beneath and Egyptian death metal sandstorm. The 3 minute long “Sacrifice Unto Sebek” is another fine example of awesomely inspired death metal. At first the track seems to reek of doom aesthetics before new drummer Geroge Kollias’ drum roll sends the song into hyper-speed. But the band refuses to just blast away, the song slows down and unleashes a hefty riff before speeding back for a round of dizzying solos.

The album just keeps going. Whether churning out doom-laden tracks (see “User-Maat-Re”) or back to staccato blast beat fests (see “The Burning Pits of the Duat”) or all around inspired death metal (see “Lashed to the Slave Stick”), Nile is clearly on top of their game. For once the Egyptian themes seem to meld perfectly, if not effortlessly with the brutality of the music and the melody that underlines the guttural vocals puts Nile in a place that is more mature and more successful than their previous releases.

I also must mention that there are two champions of “Annihilation of the Wicked.” The first is drummer Kollias, who now is sharing his time between Nile and his other band, Greece’s Nightfall. His performance is not only top notch but also much more controlled than previous Nile skinsmen Tony Laureno and Pete Hemoura. His addition of more varied change-ups also helps bring Nile to a new level. The second champion is to be the most applauded. Producer Neil Kernon (Deicide, Cannibal Corpse) has brought Nile’s musicianship to the forefront and made the music much more audible than the muddied Nile albums of the past. Kernon allows both Sanders and Toler-Wades guitars to be meticulous with their riffing without sacrificing quality and to brutal without sounding like a bolder being drug across a cement floor.

Great songwriting and performances coupled with Kernon’s amazing production easily places “Annihilation of the Wicked” atop of Nile’s output. The sheer quality of the songs on this album should undoubtedly have it included in many top 10 lists for 2005 if not hailed as the best death metal album of 2005. I’m not kidding, “Annihilation of the Wicked” is that good. I haven’t been this excited about death metal since Vital Remain’s “Dechristianize.”