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Nile are currently celebrating their 20 year anniversary in the best way possible: a huge tour showcasing their entire discography over two sets! For several weeks Nile have been on a relentless mission to not only celebrate their 20th year of Egypt-driven brutality, but reward their fans with an extra-long show. On top of that Nile have opted out of taking a supporting band on the road, and instead have encouraged the “3 best local bands” from each city they hit to come share the stage with them! Karl Sanders, mastermind behind Nile, took some time to meet with me backstage and talk about the history of his band.

What was your first band and what did it sound like?

Karl: Oh, that’s a head scratcher… The first band that I had didn’t even freakin’ have a name. We played stuff like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd. In retrospect it was probably pretty awful, but we didn’t care. *laughs* We were just having fun making music.

What kind of changes have you seen in the death metal scene since you started out?

Karl: Well you know, it’s not the same beast anymore. When we started, we’d already been playing music for quite a long time. Death metal… was like, was a raw and new anti-form. It was, if you played death metal, you hated every other kind of music. Every other kind of music f-cking sucked, and it was all bullsh-t. We were rebelling against the Motley Crue’s of this world. You know, you could go to practice and just count on hearing, “Oh did you hear this f-cking new glam band, they f-cking suck! I hate their guts! They are f-cking posers!” And you’d crank up, start blasting away, and summon some evil. Back then it seems a lot more real. Bands were actually f-cking scary. You took sh-t seriously. I remember seeing the Morbid Angel guys for the first time, back like in ‘87 or so, or ‘86. And it was truly terrifying. You could feel the hate coming off the stage from those guys. Nowadays since death metal’s been around for 20 something years, maybe more, probably 30 years now. It seems a bit watered down by comparison, as far as the intensity and personal conviction that you would experience listening to it. Nowadays people accept it. You can listen to death metal and all kinds of stuff. But back then, it was either, or. It was truly underground. When death metal started we didn’t have an internet. The underground consisted of people sending/trading letters to each other, and tapes. Every letter that you sent out you would stuff it full of flyers for underground bands advertising their demo, or their LP, or their 7” or whatever. And that’s how things got spread around. It was a real underground community. Once the internet exploded, things changed. It seems, if you can just download something in the click of a button, and that makes you metal, well how metal are you, really?

In terms of music, lyrics, concept, etc, and how they are created; what is the creative process behind a Nile song for you?

Karl: Usually a Nile song will start with the lyrics. And Dallas or I will take those lyrics and use them to inspire some guitar riffs. Songs just kind of grow out of that.

Do you specifically write a riff to try and capture an image or a scene?

Karl: Kinda, like I always practice and have the lyrics sitting right there. I’ll just be playing and think about the lyrics and go kinda “what riff would go withthose words, kinda bring those to life. And it grows out of that.

What originally got you interested in ancient civilizations, and Egypt in particular?

Karl: Well it was always kind of like a personal interest. I remember when I was a kid my dad was fond of big epic movies, like “Ben Hur,” “Sodom and Gomorrah”, “Land of The Pharaoh”, “Ten Commandments”. Big ancient flicks, stuff that looks great on a big screen. So you know I was a young impressionable kid, I always thought that was pretty amazing. Later on when I found myself in a band called “Nile” I said “If I were a listener, what would I wanna hear from a band called ‘Nile’? “ And then I went “Well, duh!” I like all this ancient history stuff, so why not? It was like a no-brainer. A little light went off, I went “Duh!” Here we go.

How much time do you spend on average researching for an album?

Karl: Different ones took different amounts of time. Probably Nephen-Ka took a cumulative sh-t load of hours. That was before the internet, and I didn’t have an internet connection at home. I was in college at the time and I would cut class to go down to the library because they had a huge T1 connection and you could like do all kinds of research. Look up this, look up that. Yeah, a lot of Nile songs came from that. I went to the library a lot, spent a lot of time at the local library. Looking through anything, anything I could find. Nowadays since we have google search engines, nowadays you can find the most ridiculous obscure stuff in seconds!! So the concept of “researching” lyrics has changed. It’s not the same as it used to be. It’s a much quicker process. Especially since over the years I’ve built up my own collection of Egyptology books. So it’s kind of a different beast altogether than what it used to be. Black Seeds, I spent like a year or so working on those lyrics.

Have you ever written anything lyrically that you found out to be inaccurate?

Karl: You know probably, although right now my brain is jello. We’ve been on tour for several weeks now playing two sets a night. We are so exhausted that I can barely put two sentences together. So I’d have to answer that there probably has been a couple of things. Which have caused me to ask myself: What is the purpose here? Am I striving for 100% perfect historical accuracy? Or am I writing death metal songs. You know the truth of it lies somewhere in the middle there. Cause even now the historical stuff I’m still picking out this brutal thing, and that brutal thing, and that thing over there. I mean, who wants to write death metal songs about the lotus flower of the gods? That’s not gonna make a good enough death metal song. So it’s already an unbalanced perception of ancient history, just because it’s being cherry picked.

What other periods of history are you interested in besides Egypt?

Karl: You know, I don’t know. *laughs* I’ve been doing that for so long I haven’t really thought about anything else.

What do you think about a lot of these bands nowadays that are doing the “folk metal” thing with Anglo-Saxon lyrics and folk instruments or melodies?

Karl: Well, some of them I find entertaining. Some of them I find to be unbearably boring, and stupid, and pointless. But I’m not gonna name any names.

Do you know of any other historically driven bands that you would recommend to other history fans?

Karl: Well, we just toured with the Ex Deo guys, so there’s an obvious answer right there.

Well that leads to my next question. You played on an Ex Deo track The Final War, how did you get involved with those guys and end up playing in their record?

Karl: Well Mauricio called me and said “Hey, you wanna play on one of these songs?” And we of course knew him from Kataklysm for years, and years, and years. So I was like, well sure! Why not? From his side you know he wanted to include, because I played in Nile which is kind of a history thing. And his song was about Antony and Cleopatra, and The Final Battle at Actium. It was like kinda, putting together something he thought would work. For me I mean I just like the guy, so I played on his record. And I had a lot of fun doing it.

Well, you kinda crossed off my next question. I was gonna ask if we could expect a Nile/Ex Deo tour in the future.

Karl: *laughs* Well we’ve already had one here in America, so maybe in Europe it would fly. But I doubt we could do it twice here in America.

Well, that’s all I had scripted out. Is there anything else you want to say?

Karl: Anything else you wanna say?

Thanks for the interview.

Karl: Thank you for the interview!

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