hell yeah, a new nile record! i just love this friggin' egyptological death metal monster. i have collected all their full length records on vinyl over the years, some even on doubles which isn't usually my modus operandi. so i was all over the pre-order to their new opus 'what should not be unearthed'. when pre-orders went live i was disappointed about the colour options. nowadays nuclear blast europe presses all their releases on gold, silver, or clear vinyl. most boring.
nb doesn't seem to give their releases any thought. it's like there is a new record, ok let's press it on the regular colours whether it makes sense in combination with the cover art or not. same thing with 'what should not be unearthed'. thankfully it was also pressed on a fourth colour, which is used frequently as well as of late but looked more pleasing to me. so i chose lilac vinyl. all out of 300 copies.
but now to the musical content. after a couple of listens and spending some time with lyrics and liner-notes there is not the shadow of a doubt that nile's eighth full length is an absolute scorcher from start to finish. i don't know how they make it happen to crank out one master-piece after the other, but it's just that - a master-piece. it's impossible to choose a favourite but i like 'evil to cast out evil', which is about the demon pazuzu who has the ambivalent quality to protect a person by being the greater evil compared to others; in particular.
i recommend this album to you bar none. go get this bad boy! the presentation however, is a little downer. no complaint about the cover art, it's pretty cool and is what a nile record should look like. it's about some details. nuclear blast eu doesn't press their records on 180g vinyl anymore. the usual poster is missing. they dropped those cool black dust sleeves for the regular white ones here. there is no sticker with the pressing info of your copy anymore and above all, the d-side's emptiness just screams for an etching. what's wrong there, nb? nuclear blast. 2015.
