"First you work for your reputation, then it works for you." These words can easily be applied to the American special-ops tomb raiders.
The release of the new album was marked by NILE's move under the wing of Nuclear Blast, and, as is customary with the prominent German label, a major promotional campaign with online singles and various limited and exclusive editions of the disc. This band crawled out of the deep underground and through sheer hard work earned the right to be called one of the most significant death metal acts of the new millennium.
So what was I saying about reputation?
It was precisely their reputation and the extensive promotional campaign that generated a lot of buzz around the new album. But I'll say right away: in my opinion, Ithyphallic is not NILE's best record.
Naturally, the inhuman instrumental mastery characteristic of this band hasn't gone anywhere, but after Annihilation Of THE WICKED, it's hard to surprise us in that department. The instrumentation, vocals, and sound are in the spirit of its predecessor — there's nothing to add. Naturally, I won't even mention the recording quality. But this album is missing something. As if too much material was recorded during the Annihilation Of THE WICKED sessions, all the best stuff went onto the 2005 album, and the rest was crammed into Ithyphallic. It's NILE being NILE, sure, but the new album doesn't hook you the way previous ones did.
Needless to say, the rating is given only in the context of this remarkable band's entire body of work. Other bands in the brutal echelon still have a long way to go before they reach these monsters.