{"id":319991,"date":"2026-03-09T02:51:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T02:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/319991\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T02:51:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T02:51:23","slug":"black-seeds-of-vengeance-by-nile-the-story-behind-the-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/319991\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Seeds Of Vengeance by Nile: the story behind the album"},"content":{"rendered":"

As metal\u2019s \u2018nu\u2019 millennium dawned, a certain breed of headbanger was feeling both alienated by mainstream trends, and dispirited by a death metal<\/a> scene well past its prime.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d already praised Ra for South Carolina\u2019s Egyptophile death cult Nile after their stellar 1998 debut, Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka, supported with relentless touring and fearsome word of mouth. Hopes and expectations were high, but when Black Seeds Of Vengeance exploded in the autumn of 2000 and we were flayed to the wall by its obsessive brute force, finally, death metal had a new scene leader.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For Karl Sanders, Nile\u2019s chief songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, guiding light and sole remaining founder member, it wasn\u2019t just vindication for years of struggle, sacrifice and commitment, but also for the highly fraught process of making the LP itself.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNothing went to plan on that record,\u201d Karl intones, in a sedate but cultured Deep South drawl. \u201cWe had spent many long months rehearsing the songs, and we were really over-touring, playing our hearts out, because this was our freaking chance, finally. After a decade trapped in South Carolina we were hungry, so we were playing our asses off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Nile\n<\/p>\n

Nile in 2000: (from left) (Image credit: Alex Solca\/Press)<\/p>\n

One brutal consequence of this Stakhanovite slog was that shortly before recording, drummer Pete Hammoura \u2013 Karl\u2019s friend and bandmate for 10 years before co-founding Nile in 1993 \u2013 suffered a shoulder injury that would never fully heal. Determined to complete recording despite the pain, Pete spent two weeks working on drum tracks before facing the sad realisation that a replacement was needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really heartbreaking,\u201d stresses Karl. \u201cPete and I were best friends, we played in many bands \u2013 even dated the same set of twins! He\u2019s like family to me, still is.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we were halfway through our allotted studio time, and instead of making a record in a month, we\u2019ve now got basically 11 days to do everything. The money was running out, we were all broke, so we had to buckle down and work round the clock ferociously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Luckily, Karl was buddies with Derek Roddy \u2013 then a fledgling session drummer with a few second-division records under his belt, now one of extreme metal\u2019s most respected and influential percussionists.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Nile&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Nile\u2019s Karl Sanders in 2000 (Image credit: B Peele\/Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t have that reputation at that point!\u201d laughs Karl. \u201cHe was just our wacky friend, a guy we knew and loved who was in our little circle of life. But he was the right guy at the right time. By some stroke of fate or planets aligning, he wasn\u2019t busy when we called.<\/p>\n

After a decade trapped in South Carolina we were hungry, so we were playing our asses off.<\/p>\n

Karl Sanders<\/p>\n

\u201cHe drove up to South Carolina, he\u2019d never heard the songs \u2013 this sounds like a made-up legend, but he set up his drums, put on the headphones, listened to [the demo] once, said, \u2018OK, gimme the click\u2019, and in his first take did nearly half the fuckin\u2019 song. And the tracks were totally keepable. We were all like, \u2018Holy shit!\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd that\u2019s how we worked \u2013 it was first or second take on every section of every song. It was mind-boggling, his capacity to realise what he needed to do and execute it right there, on the spot, because we knew very well there\u2019s no second chances if we fuck this up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pressure was on, and Derek really delivered.\u201d Karl quickly makes sure to share the plaudits around: \u201cBut everybody making that record had to rise to the challenge. This was a real growth for us, it was proving we could push ourselves to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Nile, the dissolution of their original three-piece line-up was
a corollary of their hard-fought ascent to metal\u2019s world class. Bassist Chief Spires fled soon after the Black Seeds\u2026 tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was animosity there,\u201d admits Karl in a low murmur. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t happy. We didn\u2019t have enough time to properly record things with the bass on this record like we wanted to, so I\u2019m sure that was a factor,\u201d he concedes, although he also remembers Chief\u2019s last band meeting, where the bassist claimed that his new nu metal band would sell \u201cfive times more records\u201d than the 50,000 that Black Seeds\u2026 shifted. \u201cThat didn\u2019t work out quite the way he thought it would,\u201d quips Karl drily.<\/p>\n

More happily, this was Dallas Toler-Wade\u2019s first Nile record, the guitarist bringing in his own two-minute mummy-blaster of a song, Multitude Of Foes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no stopping that guy,\u201d Karl remembers. \u201cHe was very highly driven, which I related to very well. For many years Dallas and I were very close teammates working in concert together. It wasn\u2019t until many years later that changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Nile\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Alex Solca\/Press)<\/p>\n

With such a rigorous schedule, Karl says, inter-band relations were bound to strain. \u201cWe were a young band at the bottom of the bill, trying to prove ourselves everywhere, and having to be our own security onstage,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was a lot of violent incidents on that Black Seeds\u2026 tour. We were fighting off stage moshers, people were running in and crashing into us. Those were violent times.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can hear the pressure, it\u2019s really under the gun. That made some of the dark energy even darker. It\u2019s do-or die.<\/p>\n

Karl Sanders<\/p>\n

With such a complex, expensive set-up \u2013 guitars, synths and computers, all pedal-operated \u2013 the band had to defend their property with physical force.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understood the equation: if I let somebody stomp all over my fragile synth gear, I\u2019ve got no show the next day,\u201d he reasons. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got small children and a job, the amount you\u2019ve taken care of just to go on tour, you\u2019re heavily invested. No one was helping pay for plane tickets, you\u2019re doing it on your own dime.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur families were all broke; what little money we made we sent home, because if you don\u2019t, the wife can\u2019t pay the rent.
I wasn\u2019t a young foolish kid at this point, I understood all the ways things could fuck up.\u201d<\/p>\n

With its jaw-dropping intensity, layers of unorthodox instrumentation and frantically wired performances, Black Seeds Of Vengeance was anything but a fuck-up. Nile\u2019s Ancient Egypt \u2018unique selling point\u2019 was pushed to new levels, with frenzied ritual atmospheres conjured by home recordings using instruments discovered in world music shops, such as the ba\u011flama-saz (a long-necked lute) and Tibetan hand drums.<\/p>\n

He had even spread Egyptian textbooks across the house, and has since begun printing the lyrics out on yellow parchment, to get him into the right headspace for making such distinctive music.<\/p>\n

Despite these extraordinary efforts, the result did not match up to Karl\u2019s exacting standards. \u201cBlack Seeds\u2026 is actually a terrible fucking mix,\u201d he asserts. \u201cI can hear the pressure, it\u2019s really under the gun. That made some of the dark energy even darker, because there\u2019s a desperation to it; it\u2019s definitely \u2018do or die\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did Karl feel when Black Seeds Of Vengeance quickly took on such momentous life of its own? After all, it\u2019s still hailed amongst the genre\u2019s finest works to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt touched people,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were able to get something they wanted from it, which I believe is the songs, the violence, the energy, the darkness of it. That\u2019s what matters. This record is far from perfect, but there is a vibe to it\u2026 there\u2019s a definite violence. If I had to choose between violence and evil or technical perfection, I choose violence and evil!\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 337 (June 2020)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As metal\u2019s \u2018nu\u2019 millennium dawned, a certain breed of headbanger was feeling both alienated by mainstream trends, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-319991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}