Nile – Black Seeds of Vengeance – Review

Nile

Black Seeds of Vengeance (Relapse)
by Martin Popoff

Nile have always managed to stuff their pressing form of urgently quick death down willing throats by distracting their grim, salivating masses with a good storyline, monstrous productions and odd sinister melodies that seem wafted from the depths of stone-silent catacombs. That formula continues with Black Seeds Of Vengeance, a record that charms by being so in love with death metal, while pushing the form ever-forward, using progressive breaks and weird exotic instruments, in the creation of a netherworld that is both mechanistic and overpowering yet organic, vibrational, sorta stoner rock at times, and that simply pummels the fight out of the listener through disjointed, heart-racing activity. The production is a thing to behold as well. Extremely thick bass and guitar smothers each track just to the point of highest panicked struggle. Death that sucks you in and creates a world around you, rather than the usual, ‘I gotta be cool and act like this is actually getting me off’ spewage that is in danger, as with the first downturn in the mid-’90s, of killing the genre but good.
(1720 South State Rd. Upper Darby, PA 19082)