Haven't really been a big Nile fan. I really liked the song but the vocals turned me off.

This song is fucking killer! I love how it's like a bizarre avant garde version of their Amongst the Catacombs sound... Always loved the bizarre character type voices from that album, added a manic feel to it.

that's wicked, but a bit of a mess, the secondary vocalist sounds cool too [not the clean bit though]
thanks for the link whoever posted it

http://soundcloud.com/nuclearblastrecor ... ho-come-to

Wow the production is dogshit. The music is pretty good, but man does the production job kill it. Sucks, because I was really looking forward to this based on the cover.

Also, is the clean vocalist the same guy that does the vocals on Karl Sanders' "Of The Sleep Of Ishtar"? If so, his vocals on that song are amazingly ghostly and melodic. Here they're... bad.

Hmm... the production isn't that bad. I guess it adds a little bit of crudeness and darkness to the album. Good song, and the cleans are pretty good as well.

And people still wonder how Nile is such a polarizing band?!

New song is posted and already there's a dividing line between people who think it's great and people who think it's crap. Can't be more Nile than that I guess.

A bit too clean to my taste, but the song itself it's good.

The production is too thin (?) for my taste.

My favorite of theirs is Annihilation, one of the finest production jobs in the genre.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's Breazeale, at least for the "I will embrace/release/whatever you" part and the part with the cleans over Karl's high vocals. (the guy who did the guest vocals on Unas). When he did vocals for Nile, he often did them in this weird style so that might be why they sound odd. I think the cleans by themselves around 3:40 are actually Dallas.

One thing I noticed about this is that it reminds me of some of their older stuff, especially the stuff from their demos. On a track like Wrought, you have a bunch of the same stuff that the new track does (higher vocals, clean vocals) that you haven't seen from them in a long time.

The first time I heard the new song, I was wondering what the fuck was going on, but it's grown on me. My only real complaint is that the production is thin. It's nice that they are changing their sound a bit.

The first half is your typical Nile blastfest; doesn't really hold my attention that much anymore. When it slows down halfway through though, that's when the song REALLY picks up steam. Production wise this is amazing. Hearing a modern death metal song with dynamic range and audible everything and that beautiful drum sound is such a breath of fresh air from the hordes of thin plastic sounding albums being released right now.

I dunno, maybe I have to listen again, but the production sound (while not being the typical modern death metal sound) was a bit lifeless to me. Like a previous post said, its a bit too thin.

Listening to this song several times over, I like to retract what I said. The production itself is fairly clear with both the drums and guitars being audible unlike Ithyphallic. I was just caught off guard by how different the guitar tone is from previous albums. It seems that they turned up the mid range on the tone as opposed to the heavy scooped sound that they have opted for in previous albums. The production does sound a bit thin overall due to this tone and the lack of an audible bass guitar tack (a common problem with all previous Nile albums).

Personally, I think Nile would be a band that would benefit greatly from a producer such as Erik Rutan or Colin Richardson in terms of getting an evenly mixed recording where every instrument is audible and the bass drums 'thud' rather than 'click'.

Erik Rutan is awful. Probably one of the worst producers out there. You consider stuff like this to be well produced? It's a wall of sound where everything is fighting for space except for the bass which apparently didn't bother showing up. The guitars drown everything out and the bass drums are clicky as hell. Sounds like they're using tupperware as kick drums.

Tis a matter of opinion. The new Hate Eternal sounds fine to me with the drums and bass still being audible despite the guitar dominant mix. Of course, the previous HE record before that was without a doubt a dud in terms of the bass and drums drowning out the guitars. I happen to think that your beef with Hate Eternal has more to do with their songwriting qualities of fitting as many blast beats and dissonant strumming patterns into a song as opposed to how it's to produced hence the 'wall of sound' analogy. Also, 'clicky' bass drums to me is something that I would use to describe the bass drum tones on say, Fleshgod Apocalypse's Oracles and the new Hour of Penance record.

I'm not saying the man is perfect, Morbid Angel's last album was also bit off in the production department as well as the song writing. However, I need only cite the new Cannibal Corpse record and Paths of Possession's The End of the Hour to prove that Erik is capable of making a great sounding death metal record.

But then again, to each his own.

whoah, erik rutan looks like matt damon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRp_mVi969I

i'm really liking the new album artwork, good t-shirt material i reckon.

i'd say the production is kinda ok'ish, but some of those vocals are pretty awful

For everybody who is wondering about the vocals. Here is a statement of Karl Sanders (copied from the official Nile Forum):

"Right on. For anyone interested in the Vocal Breakdowns in this [new] song;

The Part that goes "I will Erase You" is Mike Breazeale and Jason Hagan Harmonizing
The Part that goes "I am Re" Is Mike Breazeale
The very first growl , the last growl , and the two demon possesion growl/screams over the instrumental break is Jon vesano
The rest is me , doing a couple of different voices - the first and very last verse is a normal Karl subteranna "mummy growl" , then there is the Sobe Karl voice - kind like the old school aforementioned "coroner vox" and a few variations where the different voices are layered together for sickness .

The idea is /was to branch out somewhat , and incorporate a little variety in the vocals beyond ( in the words of our detractors) the same old thing .

[...]

"Fiends" happens to be the one random track that doesn't have Dallas - but it does have a wide variety of guests .

[...]

Yes, the vox on Fiends ARE different."

No Dallas in this song, eh? That's a first since he joined.

On a slightly different subject from the new song, I'm actually looking forward to reading the liner notes in this one. The notes in the last record were genuinely informative and lively. If it's like Ithyphallic and there are none, that'll be a shame, but I have to remember that these liner notes are a privilege and not a given, considering how few artists put as much thought into them as Sanders.

I like how Sanders refers to his vocals as "mummy growls" lol. Never thought about it that way it's pretty fitting.

The new song is growing on me but sadly the production is not. While the production isn't rather lifeless at least it's not a deal breaker like some Ageless Venomous by Krisiun for example.

sounds really boring -

sounds like the same riff repeated for4 mins

I quite liked this song. Yeah, the production lacks a lot of depth, but the song itself is quite good. Also, the vocals are good, I don't know what people are complaining about.

This track actually sounds rather interesting though it'll definitely take a few more listens for me to really get excited for it. The clean vocals actually remind me of Cynic for some reason during the "I will erase you" segment. Nice to see a breakdown of vocals at any rate; I can never tell which vocalist does specific parts.

Am I the only one who only really liked Annihilation of the Wicked? I thought Black Seeds of Vengeance wasn't bad either. But Ityphallic seemed like b-sides of Annihilation, worse, it seemed like they made the same album all over again but a lot less good one. And then they delve in fast, technical, egyptian-sounding stuff that can't hold my attention one second. It's like they forgot to write good songs and only go for the sound.

Not even close to being the only one.

I think the song is decent. Also the vocals don't bother me that much and I can definitely see what they were going for.

Annihilation is solid, but relied too much on repetitive, brute songwriting force, neglecting technicality. Prefer Ithyphallic, Those Whom..., and (especially) Shrines to it.

I love Annihilation of the Wicked. Totally heavy, well-done and atmospheric beast of an album. Man it's been a while since I heard it...should revisit it sometime.

Yeah I just gave AotW a spin today, it's a monsterous record.

As far as this new one goes the vocals have grown on me a bit. They've tried something new at least, so I'll give it a shot.

Get the song "The Fiends Who Come To Steal The Magick Of The Deceased" from the new album "At The Gate Of Sethu" as MP3 for free!



http://www.nuclearblast.de/en/label/music/band/about/71047.nile.html

I don't know, man. I played that shit like 5 times, but... yeah, that kind of sucked. Weak vocals, weak riffage, and the production job is shit.

New song is kinda meh. Terrible vocals.

Not a huge Nile fan but I'm digging the new song after the first listen. If nothing else it's good that they're varying it up a bit in the vocal department.

Meh, I really dont like the song, the vocals are awful at times and the guitars are not so good, unfortunately it doesnt sound very promising. Anyway I must check out the full album.

iTunes now has samples of every song, and they're pretty kickass.

I've never been a huge Nile fan (I only have a couple albums and they don't get played that much) but I'm not loving this much at all. Unless the rest of the songs are really awesome, I won't even consider buying this one. I don't mind the vocals, and in fact I actually find it kind of a nice change of pace from Nile's almost exclusive growling. But the production is pretty bad. Thin and flat, and I really love my death metal to sound evil, guttural, and muddy. I think with a band like Nile, that fits their style, too (it's like a dirty ancient Egyptian artifact being dug up ). This is just kind of mediocre metal production and has no real atmosphere to it. The drums are also pretty obnoxious, every few seconds it seems like there's an overly elaborate fill, and it just didn't seem like the song was really progressing much in terms of songwriting. There wasn't really a climax, even though it seemed like they were building to one...I kind of had a "Was that it?" feeling when it ended sort of abruptly.

I dislike how thin the guitars sound on the new track. I haven't listened to the samples yet, but so far - not stoked for Sethu. Don't get me wrong, I thought TWTGD was a stellar album; this one has yet to live up to it in any sense. Neil and Karl have been head over heals promoting how awesome it will be yet it sounds so modern and not what I would expect from Nile. I wish they would bring the music back to their roots a bit. Also - both the covers are fairly bad even for Seth standards.

At first I wasnt a big fan of the new song, but after listening to the samples it seems like this album will indeed kick asses.

New track up for streaming.

http://store.nuclearblastusa.com/Item/N ... DER-/42383

I like it more then the last track. sounds like your standard Nile.

now that's more like it