Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka

The best way for me to describe anything by Nile is a brutal, raw, unrelenting attack on the senses, but by no means take this to be a bad thing! Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka (to be written as ATCONK for the rest of this review to save time) is the first full album I have heard by Nile and I have to say that it is intensely brutal but still manages to keep a strong element of groove. The album is short, raw, and very much to the point with the majority of the songs clocking under 3 minutes. As I’m unfamiliar with Nile (having only heard separate songs off of albums instead of hearing the whole album) I’m not sure if it is in typical Nile style (hehehe) to interject Egyptian chants and marches between songs but they are in abundance on ATCONK. The production on this album isn’t the best and unfortunately suffers from the same affliction that grindcore albums tend to have and that is that the sound gets very muddy because of the amount of action happening at one time. With the drums blasting, the relentless grinding guitars and the deep guttural growl of the vocals, sometimes, everything gets enveloped and it can tend to sound like a massive wall of noise. Not being a massive grindcore fan, I was surprised at how much I like this album despite its production shortcomings. This is a classy album from a classy band that I would highly recommend especially if you want to hear some good Grindcore.