Nile

Ithyphallic

[3/5]

Five albums into their career, South Carolinian death-metal masters Nile have etched their style in stone as hard and permanent as the pyramids that provide the backdrop for their lyrics: Hyper-technical riffs, solos and blastbeats that careen, frantic and ferocious, into a tornado-like blur; guttural vocal incantations that invoke the spirit and bloodlust of the homicidal Egyptian gods; a sense of proportion that can never be too epic, too sweeping, too monolithic. On Ithyphallic-which basically means “erection”-high priest Karl Sanders occasionally slows his guitar to a groaning band-saw rumble (especially on the title track and “Eat Of The Dead”), but Nile’s signature Pyrrhic blaze ultimately prevails, the notes-per-beat ratio spiraling into the blackened stratosphere like two giant cobras locked in an eternal death-dance. Meanwhile, these dudes are well on their way toward replacing Cannibal Corpse as death metal’s foremost purveyors of unintentional dick jokes. (NUCLEAR BLAST) J. Bennett,/i>