Festivals of Atonement

If you look at this first ep...and Nile's latest album In Their Darkened Shrines, you can see that Karl Sanders is the musical genious behind this band. Although Nile's sound has improved in these last ten or so years (faster, heavier, more complex, intenser, better vocals, pretty much an improvement on everything) the core of what Nile is has remained unchaged from this first Nile ep, the only reason they are better is because they got better musicians, the great song writing has remianed the same since its Karl's doing. Alot of bands change from their early demo/ep days, like Behemoth for example. Nile still played death metal with both powerful and atmospheric artifical sounds and melodies back in 1995. The complexity and skill has changed over the years..but Nile remains what they are today thanks to Karl Sanders keeping the band consistent since day one, I believe it is him that makes this album and this band so great.

The music delivered here like I said is similiar to most Nile, and for the bands first ep its damn good. The vocals aren't as good from their newer stuff, they kinda sounds like a weak Chris Barnes, but what do you expect from a vocalist that left Nile to create a Nu metal/death metal crossover band. The vocals are good though and they have their moments, but a few times, mostly on The Black Hand Of Set, they absolutly are horrible and painful to listen to. They start to sound less death metal and more like Oscar from sesame street (the dude in the garbage can). They just sound a bit goofy, but its not often on the album, most of the time they are deep and harsh. But when they do sound bad it takes away from the music alot. Thankfully this album focuses more on the instruments.

The drums are still great, just think of a simpler version of In Their Darkened Shrines drums'. They can match the newer albums speed, but the complexity is a bit lacking. The drums here are better than what you will find on most death metal albums, the have power, are loud, and can get very fast and heavy. Whats interesting and enjoayble about a good many of the songs, particularly on Wrought, is the band combines most everything about what makes Nile good and puts it on one song. On Wrought the band uses their great drumming, the speed of it, and combines it with the heavy guitar which plays great riffs, and lays in some rhythym with keyboards or computer generated sounds that mimic classic or acoustic instruments. The synthetic sounds give this songs alot of range and rhythym, making them more than just generic death metal (good generic death metal), and they sound authentic too, or as close as possible with the equipment they have, not like they are fake. Of course here Nile introduces with sucess their powerful apocalyptic destructive god chants, like on the intro to extinct. A sound found on all of Nile's later works that gives them range, volume, power, and making Nile a unique band of their own.

This is the birth of one of Death Metals most unique bands, this is just as enjoyable as any of their other works, even if it sounds a bit primative and naive in comparison. Its just interesting to see what a band was like before they were anything. That and the great music delivered on this ep makes it worth owning for any Nile fan, if you are not a Nile fan, get their full lengths first, then look for this demo or the compilation In the Beginning that has both of Nile's eps. If you can get past the few moments of horrible Oscar The Grouch Vocals, (there is only like one to two minutes of them on the entire ep so its not so bad) this is an Album for you.