Nile – Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka (1998)

April 29, 2022

Nile’s debut album (not counting the demo, even though that feels long enough to be an album) is a blocky and solid affair that introduces the world to the band’s unique take on combining ancient Egypt with death metal. This is far from the polish of Annihilation Of The Wicked or In Their Darkened Shrines, but its great to see where the band’s musical journey truly started to begin and flourish. At a first listen, the sheer number of instrumental interlude tracks is worthy of note. These would continue on later releases, but in a dialled back fashion, appearing once or twice, rather than almost every song.

This is a pre-Wade and pre-Kolias recording but does not suffer for it. In fact, the drummer on this record, Pete Hammoura, is incredibly talented, brewing up a shitstorm of light-speed blasts and fills of his own. The production is enormous and chonky, and its easy to be overwhelmed a bit by Catacombs. As far as death metal goes though, this is pretty solid.