I'm some sort of fucking asshole.”
By Kelley Simms
NILE REBORN
Nile
Mosh: Is there ever a fear of running out
of the Egyptian-themed material, or do
you even think about that?
KS: I’m not at all worried about that. With
thousands of years of Egyptian history and
mythology and religion to pull ideas from,
I'm not going to run out any ideas anytime
soon. In fact, it would take more than a cou-
ple of bands to depreciate that well even to
come close to drying it up.
Mosh: On this album, there is more of a
collaborative songwriting team within the
band. In the past, you wrote most of the
material.
KS: This album has definitely benefited
from the multiple contributions of all the
band members. There was a real spirit of
team unity and brotherhood; collaboration
and cooperation that I haven’t seen in this
band since the Nephren-Ka days.
T
echnical death metal Egyptologists,
Nile, has returned with its brutal
ninth full-length release Vile Nilotic
Rites. Featuring leader/guitarist/vocalist
Karl Sanders, guitarist/vocalist Brian
Kingsland, bassist/vocalist Brad Parris and
longtime drummer extraordinaire George
Kollias, this is the most vicious the band
has sounded in years. To celebrate Nile’s
new release, the band is embarking on the
39-date "A Vile Caustic Attack" US tour
with special guests Terrorizer, which
makes a November 13th stop at The Forge
in Joliet.
IE spoke with Sanders about the new
album, his love for Egyptian history, and
what he likes the most about playing in
Chicago.
Mosh: What does the album title Vile
Nilotic Rites signify?
Karl Sanders: It’s from the HBO series
Rome. There's an episode where the news-
reader is making a political announcement.
They're attempting to denounce Mark
Antony and demonize him because they
want to go to war against them. They've got
to say enough bad shit about him to con-
vince the general populace to support a war
on Mark Antony. So, the newsreader does
this whole big thing; he worships dogs and
reptiles. He blackens his eyes with soot, he
dances and plays the cymbals in Vile
Nilotic Rites! So, I hear this, right? I'm
watching the TV program, and I go, “Fuck!
If that’s not a Nile song, then I don't know
what the fuck is! If I don't write this song,
34 illinoisentertainer.com november 2019
Mosh: With this new release, it seems
that Nile has been reinvigorated.
KS: I would totally agree with that. It feels
like we’re sort of a reborn Nile. Things are
fresh. We're hungry; we got a real team
ethos going on. People are working togeth-
er, which, that's like all I could hope for,
ever. To find some band members who
want to actually work, and work together
and do something worthwhile.
Mosh: Talk about the band’s vocal duties.
KS: We’re splitting the vocals three ways.
Everybody's involved in the vocals. Brian,
Brad, and I split it up pretty well. You can
hear each of our voices in all the songs and
doing one thing or another. So, there's defi-
nitely not any lead singer thing going on
right now, which I find so goddamn
refreshing. It's a lot more fun, and it pro-
motes cooperative mindsets. We're trying
to do what's right for every song rather
than any sense of self-aggrandizement.
This three-headed vocal attack is back in
Nile. It was missing for a while. It's some-
thing that I really believed in that needed to
be back in place for this band, to put things
back on track.
Mosh: You spent about a year in pre-pro-
duction in your own studio. Did that
amount of time give you a familiarity or
more confidence with the songs?
Karl Sanders: I would say both; the famil-
iarity with the material and the confidence
of knowing that we had it together. We'd
done the work, and we knew what to do
with these songs, and we'd already experi-
mented and tried all the different things we
wanted to try. And there's confidence that
comes from that — confidence in the deliv-
ery. When you fucking know deep down,
know what it is, you know that's the best
thing to do. It's confidence that you can't
come by any other way than actually doing
the work.
Mosh: As far as the production itself, with
the mixing and mastering by Marc Lewis,
how do you describe the sound on the
record?
Karl Sanders: It's big, it's heavy, it’s cine-
matic. And it’s also pretty cleanly recorded.
I wanted to have it be big and heavy, and
yet be articulate [enough so] you can hear
what's going on. I really wanted this album
- when you play it, and you listen to it, you
get what we [intended] for you to hear. And
that's not such a fucking easy thing [to do].
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