Review by Brian McLean
Mastodon’s Leviathan ended up being the surprise and big release last year for Relapse Records. In 2005 there is no question that Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked is the biggest and most anticipated album of the year for the Pennsylvania based label.
For Nile following up their highly acclaimed 2002 release In Their Darken Shrines with a brutal yet unyielding piece of Extreme and Epic Death Metal would be a task in itself and would further solidify the significance of the band in the genre if properly executed.
And execute is what the North Carolina based band has done with their fifth release. Not only does Annihilation of the Wicked secure Niles’s position as a leader of the extreme death metal genre, the disc slays with fury.
The Nile lineup consisting of Karl Sanders, Dallas Toler-Wade, Greg Kollias, and Joe Vesano that recorded Annihilation of the Wicked isn’t the same line up as on the Darkened Shrines CD, but the results are just as impressive. It is only Sanders, Wade and Vesano that remained from the previous release line up.
Kollias was recruited from Nightfall to handle the drummer duties, but unfortunately for Vesano after recording and days prior to touring, the time had come to make a personal business career decision thus resigning from Nile as the bassist and vocalist on good terms.
Little by little though Wade, who has been stepping up to handle the vocal duties, will now move to center stage to manage all vocals since Vesano’s departure.
Combining Egyptian sounds and themes with fierce unrelenting death metal has proved to be a lethal combination for Nile’s success. For Annihilation of the Wicked, there are ten tracks of death metal territory that were at one point untouched until Nile started staking a claim.
Whether the tracks are an instrumental such as the disc opener “Dusk Falls Upon the Temple of the Serpent on the Mount of the Sunrise,” which resulted from guitarist Sanders experimenting to the sheer power and brutalness of “Lashed to the Slave Stick,” “Cast down to the Heretic,” “The Burning Pits of the Duat,” “Annihilation of the Wicked,” and “User~Maat`Re” with the Middle Eastern sounding intro, Nile have created the equivalent of Egyptian pyramids in the death metal world. It’s a release that will be difficult to match.
Keeping up with the Egyptian theme, “Sacrifice unto Sebek” will be the first video released for the disc. It was filmed on location in Atlanta with Nile performing inside an Egyptian styled burial quarters complete with an ancient Egyptian culture theme.
There are so many good things that can be said about Annihilation of the Wicked from production to the mystical lyrical and music composition, but the basics will be enough. What can be said is that Annihilation of the Wicked has catapulted Nile into another level for metal.
Producer Neil Kernon, whose credits include Judas Priest and Nevermore, has captured the fierceness of Nile for the listener’s deafening pleasure. There’s nothing but pure death metal power and aggression that’s packed into the small silver disc.
For the added something special, Relapse has issued a stunning limited collector’s edition embossed sarcophagus tin for the release of Annihilation of the Wicked with only 5000 available worldwide. Nile fans that obtain one of the tins will not be disappointed by any means as it includes a custom Serpent-Ankh necklace, full color album cover poster, vinyl sticker and a red embroidered Nile logo patch as well as a copy of the disc.
With the release of Annihilation of the Wicked, Nile has struck with exact precision like the King Cobra that rules the Pharaoh’s tomb. The ten-track bite Nile has inflicted will have a lasting affect in the world of extreme death metal whether epic or not. Simply stated, Annihilation of the Wicked annihilates.