nile - the underworld awaits us all

five years back, nile entered a new era in the band's history with 'vile nilotic rites'. Slightly altered guitar and drum sound, slightly different song writing and it all paid off imho.

fast forward to today and the nile's tenth full length emerges from the duat. it's a logical continuation of the new sound but all turned up a notch. unmistakably nile and yet fresh all the way through.

missed out on the most limited pressing but this dark green w/ yellow splatter vinyl looks really good as well. 300 copies made. napalm records. 2024.

nile - festivals of atonement

nile is one of my favourite bands, so i couldn't pass up this very first vinyl stand alone release of their first mini album from 1995. although a bit different in approach and definitely more raw, "festivals of atonement" is death metal brilliancy already. 700 copies of this green/yellow galaxy vinyl made. hells headbangers. 2022.

nile - vile nilotic rites

probably my most anticipated album for 2019. i was a bit concerned if the band could keep up with their own standard of quality which they set throughout the years with all their splendid records. the reason for my doubts was the leaving of dallas toler wade. what a great voice and his impact on the song-writing was considerable.

thankfully new guitarist/vocalist brian kingsland is a worthy replacement for wade and musically the chemistry between the guys must have been phenomenal, because "vile nilotic rites" is a beast. all my worries had been washed away when the last tunes of the record faded out. maybe my favourite album of the year. beige vinyl limited to 300 copies. nuclear blast. 2019.

nile - at the gate of sethu (tape)

tapes have become a recent guilty pleasure of mine. it is real fun to hunt readily available cassettes for cheap. it is a welcomed addition to the vinyl collecting game, which nowadays pretty much consists of pre-ordering and paying quite some cash for rare titles. to not get too caught up in buying tape after tape i set a rule for me: don't buy stuff you already have on vinyl. well, of course there is always an exception to the rule.

i am a big nile fan. they are part of what i consider my big five (converge, mastodon, between the buried and me, high on fire and nile). for those bands i go above and beyond and when i saw a tape version of nile's 2012 opus "at the gate of sethu", i couldn't possibly say no. the cassette was released by small czech label evil horn records three years later. unfortunately my copy got a flaw in the song "tribunal of the dead" on the b-side. two pretty harsh disturbing noises were reason enough to ask for a replacement at animate records, the distro i bought the tape from.

they sent me a new one but sadly it was flawed too. strangely not equal flaws but on two songs of the b-side this time. don't know what went wrong in the production but i won't ask for another flawed tape. i consider to dub the tape myself but i have to collect more information about the process. apart from the actual cassette the j-card is an absolute winner. alternate cover art to the vinyl release and all lyrics and more art inside the fould out j-card. very nice! 100 copies made (has anyone out there also a flawed or maybe even a flawless copy?). evil horn records. 2015.

nile - in the beginning

i never bought just one single hammerheart records release and i think, i never bought any items via their store. still i get the regular newsletter of this label from the netherlands. for good reasons i am now sure of. in one of the more recent newsletters i got information about pre-orders for a new nile release. when it's about nile, i am all over it. doesn't matter what. therefore i was strongly interested in this compilation release called "in the beginning".

this release compiles their first mini album "festivals of atonement" from 1995 and their second demo "ramses bringer of war" from 1997. relapse records released this in 2000 but i didn't find any info on if it was after the release of "black seeds of vengeance" from the same year or before it. anyway, back in the day relapse licenced the vinyl rights to hammerheart records, which made it available on black vinyl only. now, seventeen years later, hammerheart re-issued it and i am happy as can be.

after a smooth pre-order process, i hold this lovely compilation in hands. "festivals of atonement" is such a strong release. it might even become my favourite pre-"annihilation of the wicked" material. especially "extinct" is a doomy, egyptian underworld scorcher. the "ramses bringer of war" demo can't hold up to but is good nile standard, which is still better than most other death metal in the world. the presentation is super slick with some gold ink on front and back cover and very nice "sand" vinyl, a.k.a. transparent beer vinyl. 300 copies made. hammerheart records. 2000/2017.

nile - annihilation of the wicked tan vinyl

'annihilation of the wicked' is my absolute favourite record of nile and one of my all-time favourites in general. my first press copy on grey marble is out of 900 copies and as i said in my 'annihilation of the wicked' re-press post, the cover sleeve saw better days. the thing with such highly sought after records is mostly that one has to have patience. i mean, it's not like i had any other chance, if i didn't want to pay over the odds. so one day there was this ebay option popping up.

in the pictures i could see that it was one of the tan coloured copies out of 700 pressed. the seller obviously didn't know because aggressive advertisement of this fact would have surely led to more attention among potential buyers. anyway, it was there for the taking for a buy-it-now price. more than i was willed to pay. after one month of watching the record still sitting there unsold, the seller lowered the b-i-n price and i snagged it right away.

holding this record in hands, i really fell in love with the vinyl colour. at first glance the grey marble and the tan colour are hard to tell apart but only on pictures from the almighty net. next to each other one can clearly see that the tan colour is brighter and the multi-colour marble is pretty prominent. unfortunately i sold my grey marble copy before it dawned on me that it might be a good idea to take a pic of the two side by side.

ah well simply check my old post, compare and see for yourself. for now i am just happy to own this bad boy. the tan has a certain sand tinge to it which matches the overall nile themes very well. maybe someday i will be able to call a bi-coloured blue and black version my own. a vinyl-collector can always dream, right? tan coloured double vinyl out of 700 copies. relapse records. 2005.

nile - what should not be unearthed

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.

nile - annihilation of the wicked re-issue

here is the next exception. a brand new re-issue of nile's mammoth release 'annihilation of the wicked'. it is my favourite album of these egyptian death metal fanatics. as you might know, i already have a first press copy on marbled grey vinyl but i was always a little bit dissatisfied with it. first: i don't think that marbled grey is the best match for the cover art.

second: my copy's glue, which holds the cover together, dried off on some ends. i can almost fold it out completely. i was always too worried to fix that, because i am scared to make it worse and probably glue it too tight so i cannot put the records inside the sleeve. anyway, grabbing an upgrade copy of a more limited first press copy seemed too expensive to really pursue it.

when i saw the whole package of this re-press at the relapse store, i couldn't help but get me a copy. fortunately high roller records from germany put up pre-orders for all four re-presses. i didn't hestitate and jumped at it. that spared me the agony of oversea shipping rates.

relapse went for a few changes to the original pressing. they changed the tracklisting of the three vinyl sides to add a bonus track. 'sss haa set yoth' was previously unreleased on vinyl. it got included on the japanese cd-version of 'anihilation...'. it was all new to me but sounds just as rad as the rest of this cracker.

furthermore they re-arranged the tracklist on the back cover, printed red instead of grey labels, gold foil logo print on the front and graced the d-side with a new etching. sorry for the bad pic of that. the colour is bad ass too. love how the gold changes with the light from gold to almost brown. i don't buy the re-pressings for 'amongst catacombs...' and 'black seeds...' because i think my original copies are superior to the new ones. but for the two i have, i can only say that relapse did a hell of a good job here. 1700 made. relapse records. 2005/2015.

nile - in their darkened shrines re-issue

this year marks the twenty fifth birthday of relapse records. this very fine underground metal label has a back catalogue full of classics and boy, they are not even slightly modest with giving these classics the re-issue treatment. one can think about this policy critically or not, it gives the new fan the possibility to get music on a new and shining copy of their desired format without paying over the odds on a second hand platform. i really acclaim this, with all its negative side effects.

in the past i exclusively bought re-issues because first press copies were hard to come by, or mostly because i couldn't afford them. i am real fine with re-issues. it's about the music and not about how limited a release is, at least not foremost. so, when i have one copy of a record, this is where i stop. don't need several copies. what for? can't spin multiple copies of the same record all at once.

at the beginning of the year an interesting problem was heading my way. i saw the announcement of relapse re-pressing their whole nile back catalogue on lovely pieces of coloured vinyl. i love nile. i have all of their albums on vinyl, for two of them i even spent the most cash i ever did for a record. so of course i have a first press copy of 'in their darkened shrines' on green vinyl in my possession. but man, just take a look on this re-press. so lovely! usually when i get an upgrade-copy i give the spare one to a friend or sell them but this time...

i listened to the green copy and thought, man, that copy looks real nice, it's a thirteen years old original and i want to keep it. so now i have two copies of that record and somehow i am ok with it. is this a change in the game? or just an exception? well, time will tell. anyway, relapse went for some changes with this new version. they made a new master for the vinyl pressing, printed some new labels with the nile logo on, printed the liner notes in a legible typeface and put the nile logo on the front in green metallic foil. 1700 made. relapse records. 2002/2015.

nile - at the gate of sethu

yeah, i love nile. absolute death metal perfection. and in combination with those death bringing egyptian underworld lyrics, nile is simply unfuckwithable. as a constant reader you might know that i already own a copy of that immaculate record. and you might also know that i actually had a clear green copy and what you might know on top of that too, i wasn't really satisfied with it. and simply because i had the chance to buy a more limited and better looking beige vinyl copy without any problems on pre-order at that time. why i didn't, is just beyond me now. nuclear blast had just some exemplary photos up and the beige looked boring. i think that was it. but i don't want to pull any feeble excuses. it was a dumb move and i corrected it but not without any extra burdens of course.

i saw this sealed and brand new copy on ebay. yeah, it looked pretty good. i wanted it. and even though it was a bit pricey, i knew that the price wouldn't come down any time soon. not with such a great record. the time was right to go for it, i pulled the trigger and finally came to peace with "at the gate of sethu". it is everything nile promised with their previous records and beyond that. every single song a master piece, no fillers all killers. if you liked them already i warmly recommend this to you without any doubt. it has become my second favourite record next to "annihilation of the wicked". it has the same sinister touch to it. the art work is fantastic in my opinion. seth as the ambivalent god between good and evil.

now that i had two copies of this masterpiece, i thought about what to do with the green one. at first i thought i should frame the cover and one vinyl disc and hang them on a wall at my home, but then again... i mean, it's a fantastic record and apart of being played for a few times, it was in a great shape. why don't give anybody else the chance to fall in love with this monster of an album? so gave it to a friend. he was happy, i was happy, much too much happiness for a death metal subject. i'll go put on some nile to gnaw the flesh from thy bones, happiness!

this record comes with the obvious but lovely gatefold sleeve with some introductional words by karl sanders. additionally you get two inserts for each lp with the lyrics and the liner notes. 180gr marbled beige vinyl, black dust sleeves and a poster. this version is hand-numbered, #26 out of 250 copies. nuclear blast. 2012.

discogs: nile - amongst catacombs of the nephren-ka

nile - amongst catacombs of the nephren-ka

holy seven, i have them all. all seven nile long players on coloured vinyl. after i sucessfully tracked down an orange copy of 'black seeds of vengeance', i was really bound and determined to bring it to an end. so i searched the net for opportunities. discogs was the first attempt to find a solution. and the last. a seller from france was selling this for a really agreeable price. i can't really remember it, but it was way lower than the rest, which varied around the €70 mark without postage, of course. i think it only took a week to get to me.

just like on 'annihilation of the wicked', this album contains a song with a german title. 'die rache krieg lied der assyriche'. this made me chuckle a bit because there is a grammar mistake. translated it means 'the revenge war song of the assyriche'. in german there are three definite article, whereas only one in english (which is way easier, by the way. non-natives always struggle with the articles because there is a quite complicated pattern to it, which the majority of germans fail to explain. including me. i simply know the right use, because it's my mother tongue). the use of the article 'die' in front of the word 'rache' (revenge) is wrong in this case. standing alone, 'die' would be correct for 'rache', but in combination with the other two nouns of 'krieg' (war) and 'lied' (song), the article reffers to the last noun of the combination. correctly that has to be the german 'das' (das lied - the song). pretty confusing, right?!

i was really happy to be able to get the clear orange w/ yellow splatter vinyl. because of the three colour ways made, i thought it to be the coolest. there are 100 copies 'friends press' on clear, 300 on orange, 300 on clear w/ orange splatter (of which lenny has one) and 300 of my colour way. for the first time relapse pressed it to vinyl in 2008, for the ocassion of the tenth anniversary of the release of this album.

relapse records. 1998/2008

ebay usa: nile - black seeds of vengeance

nile - black seeds of vengeance

metal days over here have reached its peak today with a real gem. nile's mammoth sophomore release black seeds of vengeance. somehow in the past i thought that owning the five last records nile released would be enough. listening to 'bsov' now this opinion is beyond me. that record is superb! it's that old nile pattern. fast and technical death metal with that great feeling for oriental melodies combined with those egyptian underworld lyrics. perfect nerd stuff!

i cannot really recall how i came across this american auction on ebay. i don't know if it was by chance or if i was especially looking for it. anyway, as i saw it i thought that this is now or never. because i didn't know of any other source to get this from. discogs and dead format were dead ends and popsike told me that it wouldn't turn up on the bay that often. so i was bound and determined. in the end i won it for my max bid. you know, with one laughing eye because i got it and one crying eye because i'd have to spend a shitload of money with shipping.

in the end shipping wasn't that bad because the dude came from belgium and just sold it through ebay u.s. when it arrived i couldn't get my eyes off of that beauty. that colour is bad ass! goes perfectly with the orange lettering on the cover. sensational! condition is very good also, so i think it was worth the bucks. i believe that there are 500 of this colour way pressed. but i'm not really sure because i couldn't find a source to confirm. some other colours are around too. i saw a clear (that 100 not for the puplic thing) and a clear gold version. relapse records. 2000.

ebay usa: nile

nile - annihilation of the wicked

after i picked up 'those whom the gods detest' i really wanted to score this one, my favourite nile record, desperately. just like with 'those whom the gods detest' i waited pretty long on a discogs option, this time with the end result that it was gone before i decided to get it. arrgghh... he that will not hear must feel... 

so i extended my range of purchase options onto ebay worldwide as i was able to track down various stuff from e.g. ebay france or ebay usa in the past (not only records). the problem was to find a seller who would offer a coloured version plus for an, in my eyes, adequate price. thank god for the official exchange rate of the euro at the moment. i came upon a buy it now offering of $44,99 for the grey marbled version which is round about €35. i thought that'd be adequate and i pushed the button.

all in all with shipping it cost me around €50 which is quite a lot money for a record for me but it seems that it won't show up for less referring to popsike.com so i'm ok with it. the record itself comes as a double vinyl version on a marbled opaque grey colour. record two is way more marbled then #1. 

printed dust sleeves and a gatefold cover indeed. the liner notes and the lyrics are put down on the inner gatefold all together which is a better solution compared to 'those whom the gods detest', where the lyrics and the liner notes are printed seperately on inner gatefold and dust sleeves.

i love the black and red colour scheme on this. looks real apocalyptic. the god sebek on the back.

side d contains an etching. as i pulled out my digi-pak version of the cd i realised that the cd label and the etching are one and the same picture, only i don't know what it shows :-) looks lovely put against the light correctly. the picture really doesn't do the actual effect justice but it was hard to capture with my shitty digi-cam.

900 made. relapse records. 2005.

discogs: nile

nile - those whom the gods detest

reading my blog from time to time you may recognized that i'm a nile fan. i love the overall way they present their releases. epic death metal, outstanding lyrics, well thought cover art, liner notes, gatefold sleeves - all that stuff makes any nile record a master piece. i could already obtain 'in their darkened shrines' and 'ithyphallic' + 'at the gate of sethu' together. so next and pretty high on my want list was 'annihilation of the wicked' and 'those whom the gods detest' (t.w.t.g.d.), both on coloured vinyl indeed. 

i check various sources constantly for the possibility to nab a record of my want list. discogs is among them. looking for 't.w.t.g.d.' i found a seller from the netherlands selling it for 25€. i don't know what was wrong with me but i didn't grab it right away. even a week or so passed and i was still inactive. i mean 25 bucks is an alright price for a coloured copy that has sold out for some time. 

so one afternoon, i was hanging around lazily, i had the following furtive dialogue with myself concerning this collector's item...

-so tino, let's talk about you're so-called nile mission, ok?-

"ok."

-you like nile pretty much, right?-

"yepp"

-and you'd like to have all their stuff on coloured vinyl. that correct?-

"not really all their stuff, but principally yes."

-so you've spotted 't.w.t.g.d.' on discogs?-

"right."

-and it's a coloured copy?-

"that's what the description says, yeah."

-for a fair price?-

"well... yeah, that's right. oh, and it's sealed"

-so let's summarize this. you can get a sealed, sold out copy of a record you want pretty bad for a good price and waited a week already and didn't buy it yet? have i got that right?-

"eeehhhmm... i mean... that's what it seems like to be..."  

-what kind of mindless idiot are you? get your ass up and do what you should have done a week ago!-

"yes, sir!"

i bought it and after my vacation the record waited for me at my neighbour who friendly accepted it from the post man :)

nice colouring! opaque beige with multi colour speckles. on the back of the printed dust sleeves the liner notes are printed.

of course it comes in a gatefold sleeve. the inside shows the song lyrics and the credits.

really nice about it is that unlike the german black vinyl version this nuclear blast u.s. version comes with a cd of the entire album. so you can have a digital copy without using a sneaky download. i cut out the sticker that was on the shrink wrap. it's limited to 1000 copies. 

nuclear blast u.s.a. 2009.

nuclear blast pt. III: nile

nile - ithyphallic
a hulk of an album! nile plays everthing with virtuosity - the fast & technical parts, the slow parts & the melody parts. all under the pretext of the old egyptians which is the very factor that makes them so special to me. i just love getting lost in the whole topic of old pharaos trying to get immortal by mummification, speaking spells to get rid of enemies, showing the after-world ones glory by building enormous monuments and so on and so on.
the only thing which bothers me a bit is the missing of the liner notes on this one. that was discussed with eagerness among fans and led to the revival of liner notes on "those whom the gods detest", thankfully. but that's really the only thing not being on the top. -that solo on "the essential salts"... what a cracker!-

i was lucky to get my hands on this. actually it was sold out for a long time but nuclear blast dug out some left over copies from some forgotten vault. this happens from time to time (e.g. sepultura latest album was available again on white and some blue copies of agnostic front's my life my way were up again) but nb doesn't seem to make a big deal about those re-stocks. it seems to go unmentioned and you have to find those copies by chance. that's excactly what happened here :) i got it for the original price of 16€ and was quite happy!

it comes in a nice gatefold sleeve including the lyrics. clear gold w/ black smoke vinyl. great match with the cover art!

on the back you can see it is numbered. the four numbers indicate a pressing number in the range of 1000. i presume it's 1500 because i saw a pic of a copy on the net that was #1043 and because it's a round sum :)
if some one knows the actual pressing number let me know.


nile - at the gate of sethu
*at this point i actually wrote about my first copy of this album. i wasn't satisfied with it and re-placed it with a better one :-) read about it here.*

ebay: nile

nile - in their darkened shrines

the first time i stumbled upon nile was in my "korn" times :) i've had a metal hammer magazine at home coming along with a bonus cd. the cd featured a couple of bands including nile with the song "lashed to the slave stick" of the annihilation of the wicked album. i found it pretty extreme and didn't know if i should like it but their was a certain attraction to it. 

years later i looked through the mp3 collection of a friend of mine to see if there's something interesting for me to check out. now hardened :) by bands like whitechapel, job for a cowboy, suicide silence and the like i grabbed the digital copies of "ithyphallic" and "annihilation of the wicked". all i can say is that i fell in love with them. Great music + great egyptological and lovecraftian lyrics + great liner notes to get even more involved in the topic. so now i'm working on a nile vinyl collection because their wax releases are awesome. 

my first catch is "in their darkened shrines". i bought this one at ebay for a fair price. i was lucky that a different seller had another copy at auction just half an hour intermediately and so most bidder seemed to try to get the first auction's item. 

i know all nile stuff upward from this record and i couldn't pick a favourite. listening to "in their darkened shrines" you close your eyes and plunge into a hot, sandy world lined with pyramids and big statues depicting gods of the underworld. fantastic... 

double clear green vinyl + printed dust sleeves with all lyrics + gatefold cover with liner notes. relapse records. didn't find pressing information but i think it's limited to 500. correct me if i'm wrong.