NileVile Nilotic Rites

Vile Nilotic Rites is the ninth album from tech death titans Nile.

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Returning after some regrouping since 2015’s What Should Not Be Unearthed, Nile has undoubtedly knocked it out of the park. Technical death metal ignites on Vile Nilotic Rites, fusing diverse musical influences with bold cinematic moods, and Nile’s notorious commitment to examining the ancient world in a bonfire of physics-defying metal music.

Vile Nilotic Rites is another excursion into the wondrous mysteries of the ancient Near East, this time into Khartoum and the cyclic rise and fall of civilisations. This is announced by the haunting lyrics and mid-pace impending doom-laden sections of the opening track Long Shadows of Dread and the stately title track Vile Nilotic Rites. While the album is as impressive musically as it is intellectually, it avoids being overly austere with brutally playful tracks like Oxford Handbook of Savage Genocidal Warfare, and Thus Sayeth the Parasites of the Mind, allegedly referencing zombie ants.

Vile Nilotic Rites does indeed hark back to Nile’s early work but is more of a cumulative triumph than a throwback

In fact, in true Nile style, Vile Nilotic Rites is musically intellectual. Tracks such as the militant and destabilising Seven Horns Of War and Where Is The Wrathful Sky with its cryptic storminess are so densely crafted in minute complexity that the most discerning musicians could unpack the nuances for years. Fear not, however, for the same technical details are melded perfectly with highly listenable, memorable and character-filled elements to make Vile Nilotic Rites an album that can seduce anyone along the vector from connoisseurs of fine tech death to basically everyone else. Closing with unnerving reminder that our civilisations are finite in The Imperishable Stars Are Sickened and the ominous warnings of We Are Cursed, Vile Nilotic Rites is an album to behold.

Vile Nilotic Rites does indeed hark back to Nile’s early work but is more of a cumulative triumph than a throwback. Although it is the first album to feature new guitarist Brian Kingsland, Vile Nilotic Rites is so thoroughly and characteristically a Nile album, and likely to blow the minds of longstanding Nile fans.  At this point in Nile’s career, Vile Nilotic Rites is a complex tome of album and one that sets their own bar even higher.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Seven Horns Of War, Where Is The Wrathful Sky, The Imperishable Stars Are Sickened
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