There can be no conversation in the Technical Death Metal world made complete without mentioning South Carolina’s demigod Nile. Nile has been putting out records for almost as long as I have been alive, and 2024’s The Underworld Awaits Us All is their tenth studio record in their thirty-odd-year career!

With no intention of trying to ease audiences into the new record, Underground drops us right into “Stelae of Vultures” and we’re off to the races. The opening moments are enough to kick us in the teeth with all the elements we have come to know and love in a Nile record. The overlords of the Phrygian Dominant scale don’t hold back with the punchy riffs with that trademark Egyptian flavor with enough blast beats and double bass goodness to satisfy even the stuffiest of tech-death nerds. Their first single titled “Chapters for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes”, is exactly the mouthful we all needed. Nile has always championed at least a few lengthy song titles, but this one may be the longest in their catalog, and the most metal! Fortunately, the track is as much a mouthful as the title, and The Underworld Awaits Us All is off to a strong start.

The second released single “To Strike With Secret Fang” may be my favorite of the record, the sub-two minute track is all-killer-no-filler and showcases the best aspects of the Nile songwriting machine, without any of the fluff and goes straight into the “win” pile for me. While “Naqada II Enter the Golden Age” features newish elements of layered vocals with the exotic Egyptian touch as well, we are already getting quite settled into the expected territory.

It is in the middle of the record that Underworld begins to wane for me. The trio of near-identical track lengths, “Overlords of the Black Earth” and “Doctrine of Last Things”, while strong tracks, offer very little in terms of that special sauce that would warrant repeated listens. The latter, “Doctrine of Last Things” does offer some variety in the Gojira-esque sludgy intro, but the central verse riff felt overly simplistic, in a non-enjoyable way. With more layered cleans and more Nile-standard Phrygian riffs, the formula begins to stale. In contrast, “Under the Curse of the One God” is far more aggressive yet groovy and was the clear winner of the middle trio of the record. Intelligently playing with momentum and pacing with changing tempos, the track feels catchy yet brutal at the same time, and that is really what I am looking for in my extreme metal. While each of the trio are good Nile tracks and great tech-death tracks, “Under the Curse of the One God” is the one I find myself returning to. The track title has obvious references to Akhenaten, the maligned Pharoah who decided to eschew the polytheistic Egyptian pantheon of gods, instead opting for the monotheistic culture under the sun god Aten, with himself being at the top of the religious pyramid.

While The Underworld Awaits Us All begins very strongly, and sputters with great elements between staling elements in the second chunk, the record, unfortunately, entered snoozefest territory in the final third. The lengthy seven-minute “True Gods of the Desert” and the even longer title track “The Underworld Awaits Us All” dropped the ball in my opinion. With bloated arrangements, plodding pacing, offering no lasting impressions, except inflated grandiosity and pomp, both tracks fell into the quicksand of mediocrity. The chunky power chords of “True Gods of the Desert” were not nearly enough to bring it out of the muck, with many of the solos and overdubs feeling extremely tired and overwrought. People who are fans of long tech-death tracks with heavy proggy elements may get more mileage out of these tracks but I found myself snoozing through the fifteen-odd minutes of the record, hoping the closer “Lament for the Destruction of Time” would wake me up. However, the ender is yet another instrumental of middling returns. By this point, Nile seems to have used up all their aggressive songwriting tokens. Underwhelming.

Nile has always attracted the most proficient of extreme metal musicians. To get the obvious out of the way, Nile IS Karl Sanders and the fact that this dude is still pumping out aggressive riffs and solos with consistent ferocity is a testament to his skill. If Sanders is the head, drummer George Kollias is the backbone. When asked, Kollias is always mentioned as an influence for any tech-death and extreme metal drummers. His work with blast beats and double bass are nearly academic in its prevalence in the extreme metal space. By Ra, Kollias puts in the work in this record, his ferocity behind the kit single-handedly propping up even the weaker sections of the record. Perhaps this shows my own bias towards modern extreme metal production values, but the old-school approach of more organic-sounding drums, almost does Kollias’ efforts a disservice, with punchier bass drum bits and snare cracks, I feel like the aggression of the more intense sections of the record would have been heightened. The chosen rumble of the bass drums takes away from the near-superhuman effort of the man behind the kit.

Their lineup through the years has undergone a few changes, especially with the bass duties, but the loss of Dallas Toller-Wade is painfully apparent on this record. Even with the addition of not one, but two new guitarists, Brian Kingsland and Zach Jeter to the roster, the Nile songwriting engine is found wanting without the one-two punch of Sanders and Toller-Wade. Even the transition to a three-guitar band pales when compared to the dynamic duo.

The Underworld Awaits Us All is another example of an opinion pervading my mind over the last few veteran band releases. While the songwriting elements are all there, these records fail to capture my attention and leave an aftertaste strong enough for me to return to. By contrast, modern bands seem to add that oomph value to their tracks with higher frequency giving stronger identity to individual tracks and stronger records. Tracks like “Kafir” (from Those Whom The Gods Detest) are instant earworms. I still find myself yelling “THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD, THERE IS NO GOD BUT THE ONE TRUE GOD” and scaring people on the streets when that track comes on. Very little on The Underworld Awaits Us All gave me that level of unbridled childish maniacal glee.

The Underworld Awaits Us All is a solid tech-death record, but a weak entry to the Nile catalog. While starting extremely strong, the record loses steam throughout its runtime and becomes a slog toward the final third. Nile needs to regain some of that lost songwriting oomph lest it become yet another Boomer extreme metal band lost in the weeds by younger, more energetic, and creative bands.