Nile – The Underworld Awaits Us All (Review)

Nile are a US death metal band and this is their tenth album.

It has been a long five years since 2019’s Vile Nilotic Rites, which itself came four years after 2015’s What Should Not Be Unearthed. Suffice to say, Nile albums don’t come along very often, which makes The Underworld Awaits Us All a big deal in death metal circles.

Bringing with it 54 minutes of new music, plus two new band members, (from Imperium/Olkoth on the one hand, and Morbid Angel on the other), The Underworld Awaits Us All is a cracking return from Nile.

With its ancient Egyptian themes and inspirations, Nile’s iconic blend of technical and brutal death metal is alive and well on The Underworld Awaits Us All. The songwriting is tight and focused, with the music following suit. The band’s performances are impressively realised, and the new members – bass/guitar, and vocals each – deliver the goods fiercely.

The songs are viciously brutal and violently intricate. Their scathing assault sandblasts away everything in front of it. With serpentine riffs and deadly aggression, Nile have a brutality all of their own, and these new songs are lethal. Well-written, honed to a serrated point, and more memorable than something as extreme as this should be, the music is devastating. Amidst the ferocious carnage you’ll find a few textural elements sewn into the music too. A blackened influence here, a thrash metal riff there, a malevolent aura here, epic clean singing there; Nile know how to enrich their death metal with choice ideas and creative worldbuilding.

Of course, Nile aren’t all about the brutality alone. These are intelligently crafted songs, and the band have always brought an individual atmosphere  to their output that’s as equally all of their own as the brutal heaviness is. This aspect of Nile’s music is distributed throughout the record, but most notably in the last third or so. It’s here that the band broaden the scope of the core brutality the most.

There is an interlude track – The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka – and although I normally despise these sorts of wastes of time, this is Nile, and it serves a purpose, so I can forgive them. Apart from this, every track is murderously good, and highlights are many. You could pick any song and you’d be in for a wild ride of death metal mayhem. Having said that, I’ll try to pick a few below to further give a flavour of the album.

Opener Stelae of Vultures is a monster of frenetic savagery, and sets the tone for the album nicely. To Strike with Secret Fang is a particular favourite – a churning maelstrom of intensity that captures the best of Nile’s brutal side in a concise two minutes. Overlords of the Black Earth bathes the listener in waters that are expressive in their involved contortions – it has some atypical elements supporting its harsh extremity that are very effective, with its audible bass contribution and atmospheric enhancements. The following track is a raging beast of a song – Under the Curse of the One God. It’s another stellar cut from Nile, and an exemplar of the band’s sophisticated and idiosyncratic approach to death metal. True Gods of the Desert is a lumbering beast that recalls Morbid Angel on Gateways to Annihilation, only mixed with some Sulphur Aeon, and is every bit as good as that implies. The doomy instrumental Lament for the Destruction of Time closes the album on a suitably magisterial note that is wonderfully wrought.

Nile have produced a collection of tracks that sow destruction and fear wherever they land.  They do this with enough versatility and high quality to hold the listener’s attention throughout the whole of the album’s punishing duration.

The Underworld Awaits Us All has not disappointed. Quite the opposite in fact; Nile’s return brings with them a very strong album that sits proudly in their discography.

Essential listening.