Having released their brand new album two months ago Nile have just begun their latest chapter in the band’s extreme life. Yet another chapter that has been opened for the Pharaoh worshipping Death Metal king pins. Stating in our previous chat that the new album brings the focus back to the idea of the age old brutality of Death Metal, the record has unfairly been classified as sounding very samey. We were lucky enough to speak to Karl Sanders, Nile main man for a second time this year, asking exactly what the reaction to What Should Not Be Unearthed was like from the fans, what some of his favourite Egyptian mythology might be and is the new album the first evidence of the band bringing modern day ideologies with a Nile type filter? Listen to the full unedited interview below before we saw them destroy Tufnell Park’s The Dome.
On the new album you have the song “Call To Destruction” it was inspired, I believe by the ideological leanings of ISIS. Is this the first example of including the modern day in the Nile catalogue?
Well, no I think what it is, is when I read these news reports from 2012 where the extremists were saying “We think the pyramids should be torn down. We demand that they be torn down” and they went and had all these ridiculously long speeches and I saw all of that and said, that’s Metal fuckin’ song! THAT is a Metal song, if somebody is going “we must tear down all these pyramids!” Dude it’s a Metal song! And I said if I don’t write this song then it’s a crime. So I did!
If you had a favourite song to play live what would it be?
They’re all favourites, I like them all. In fact there are so many songs that I like that we don’t get to play you know because of time restrictions. Nile is one of those bands where we’re playing stuff we like and especially on this album I think that you can hear that we are enjoying what we do, because it’s from the heart.
Definitely, it’s got a happy chaotic demon vibe haha!
I do martial arts too and there is a certain joy of beating the shit out of someone. You feel this happiness, difficult to explain to people especially people that don’t have much testosterone in their veins one of our former Bass players was a vegetarian and he never got it (he says with a wry smile). There’s a certain joy in physical violence and musical violence it is very similar and it is a happiness although you’re participating in something that is the farthest thing imaginable from happiness yet there is a certain joy that you feel when you’re smashing someone to bits or you’re up on stage and you’re hitting a power chord and the drummer’s blasting or singer is screaming. You’re actually full of joy inside yet what you’re expressing is complete violence. I don’t necessarily understand it. Why? Why is it that humans are like that? I dunno, it’s a hold over from our primitive savage past.
As with many others you can listen to all of our interviews on our Soundcloud page, featuring Between The Buried and Me, Enslaved and many many more!
Nile’s brand new album What Should Not Be Unearthed is out now via Nuclear Blast.
