ShockHound

Interview by Bryan Reesman

For over fifteen years, South Carolina death metallers Nile have brought the world of ancient Egypt — its history, culture and mythology — to the metal masses. Using belligerent growls, blast beats and high-speed guitars meshed with exotic Middle Eastern instrumentation and melodies, frontman Karl Sanders and his bandmates (currently guitarist/bassist/co-vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade, drummer George Kollias and live bassist Chris Lollis) have forged their own special niche in the overcrowded metal playing field.
    Those Whom The Gods Detest, the band’s sixth full-length album, continues along the same Egyptocentric lines — sample song titles include “Hittite Dung Incantation,” “The Eye of Ra” and “Permitting the Noble Dead to Descend to the Underworld” — while the record’s ferocious playing and sparkling production from Neil Kernon (Queensrÿche, Cannibal Corpse, and yes, Hall and Oates) definitely mark it as a high point of Nile’s long career.
    Though Sanders takes his music and ancient history quite seriously, he’s also an affable guy with a down-to-earth sense of humor, as ShockHound found out when we recently met up with him for a chat about the new album, the future of metal, and the difference between sounding evil and being evil.

SHOCKHOUND: The cover of Those Whom The Gods Detest depicts the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. Didn't he implement a lot of religious reforms that went down poorly with the masses?

KARL SANDERS: Exactly. He instated his own brand of monotheism, which tossed out the entire old order of gods — the entire pantheon and all their priests — and all the temples were shut down. He had this idea about the one Sun God, the first big monotheistic religion in history. It didn't last, because all of those priests that were deposed and sent to the unemployment line ganged up on him, overthrew him, hacked him into pieces and reinstated the entire old order back again, which I find hilarious. They were probably in the bread line going, "What the fuck are we going to do about this asshole? He's made all of us into unemployed beggars. Fuck him, we're going to get him." I know that's what happened. It had to be.

SHOCKHOUND: How many songs on the new album deal with that particular topic, and how many of them explore other topics?

SANDERS: There's a lot of rebellion and a lot of defiance. There's also a communal sense of defiance. Whenever we are singing, “We are they whom the gods detest," it's definitely a first-person plural. We are all the people whom the gods detest, the entire metal audience.

SHOCKHOUND: You’ve explored different styles of music on your solo albums. On this album you include a couple of like-minded interludes with instruments like bağlama saz, doumbeks and Arabic Zil. When and why did you learn to play these instruments?

SANDERS: Just for fun, for my own amusement. They sound cool and are kind of interesting to me. I've always had this thought that before electric guitars, how did people make evil music? They had to do it on acoustic instruments. You actually had to find the evil notes, and not just rely on the Marshall stack to make it sound evil — you had to genuinely be evil. That fascinates me.

SHOCKHOUND: Have you guys ever played Egypt?

SANDERS: No. No big extreme bands go to Egypt. There are a few local metal bands there, but they're not allowed to actually play anywhere.

SHOCKHOUND: It would be interesting to see how people respond to your brand of metal there.

SANDERS: I get quite a lot of letters from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. There a lot of metal fans over there. What interests me is it's definitely not in your best interest to be a metal guy if you're living in one of those countries, but people still love metal enough to do it anyway. When I contrast that with some of what I see going on here in America, it seems like you really need oppression to bring out the rebellious metal side of people.

SHOCKHOUND: Perhaps it's so hard for metal to be considered rebellious in Western culture anymore, as we're so used to it now? The occasional death metal show being banned in a Disney venue aside, it's not as shocking as it used to be.

SANDERS: Wow, we've lost our shock value. That's amazing.

SHOCKHOUND Your drummer often plays so fast and furious — I was wondering if he ever met a blastbeat that he didn't like?

SANDERS: [Laughs] There's one blastbeat he doesn't like, and that's where you use the left foot to help play what should be [done with] a single foot. There are a lot of Euro drummers that cheat by using two, and it really makes the music sound gay. George is definitely a one-foot blasting monster. That's the one blast that George doesn't like, the two-foot cheating blast. You're not going to hear George Kollias doing it. He does the real thing.

SHOCKHOUND: At this point in the history of metal, we've had guitars tuned about as low as they can go and rhythms that are sped up ultrafast. How do you see the death metal genre evolving now, especially given the number of bands out there and the number of clichés that keep getting regurgitated?

SANDERS: It's curious that you ask that because I also teach guitar, and some of the younger guys that are playing guitar are going so fast nowadays that it's becoming something else again. I believe in the next five years we're going to see some metal bands coming out that will play the most mind-boggling stuff, stuff heretofore unimaginable. Just the sheer speed and the amount of notes that guys are putting out from this newer generation, it's just fucking incredible. It makes everything that came before sound like snails played it.

SHOCKHOUND: Egyptian culture and mythology have obviously had a big influence on you. Yet in recent years many people in this country have expressed strong anti-Arab sentiments, particularly in the wake of 9/11. Has your audience responded differently since then to what you do? For example, you have a couple of tracks with Arabic vocals on the new album. How have the fans responded to that? Or do they not think about it because you're dealing with ancient culture?

SANDERS: I've got several thoughts on this. I think because it’s a Hollywood-esque entertainment take on ancient history, it's so dissociated from Muslim terrorism that it never touches it in people's minds. But curiously, the metalheads in Islamic countries that listen to Nile have their own take on it. I remember getting letters from some Palestinian fans and some Israeli fans, and they were completely unconcerned or could care less that they were listing to an American band. Their take on it was their grandparents' generation caused all of these annoying problems and made their lives miserable, but they themselves are not necessarily consumed with prejudice against the rest of the world. I find that fascinating.

SHOCKHOUND: Based upon what you studied, are there any films that feature accurate depictions of ancient Egyptian culture?

SANDERS: No. The stuff you see in any movie is a Hollywood-ized interpretation. I don't think it has much to do with reality at all.

SHOCKHOUND: Are there any documentaries on Egypt that you like?

SANDERS: I'm a big fan of the History Channel. There are piles of documentaries that you can watch on there, so that's pretty cool.

SHOCKHOUND: After all of these years, what would your fans be surprised to learn about you?

SANDERS: Maybe that I'm just a simple guy at heart. I love to play guitar, I love metal music, and that stuff's my life. I don't have any big, dark secrets. I'm a parent with a 14-year-old son. I try to live pretty simply. I play music, try to be a responsible parent and try to come home with money at the end of the day so I can pay the bills.

Related Artists Nile