Band:	Nile
Album:	Ithyphallic
Style:	Brutal death metal, Technical death metal
Release date:	July 2007

01. What Can Be Safely Written
02. As He Creates So He Destroys
03. Ithyphallic
04. Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is In The Water
05. Eat Of The Dead
06. Laying Fire Upon Apep
07. The Essential Salts
08. The Infinity Of Stone
09. The Language Of The Shadows
10. Even The Gods Must Die
11. As He Creates So He Destroys [instrumental version] [Digipak bonus]
12. Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is In The Water [instrumental version] [Digipak bonus]

It seems everyone is praising this new Nile release, am I hearing a different album? "Ithyphallic" is far from being good, on the contrary it lacks the aggressive personality that the band used to have in their older days, it just seems that "someone" told the band -Ok dudes, if you don't do what WE say we won't sign you, now start writing for us or else your album won't be released?oh yeah, you're no longer with Relapse so make it more melodic, now write cheesy riffs, uh I like it now, YES!!! This is what we were looking for exactly.

So it's more o less like that, some flat riffs, a lot of melodious fruity loops and incredibly good vocals (they still got that one at least). The rest of the album becomes a little boring because of its repetitiveness, the songwriting seems like it's copying itself over and over again and even though the brutal leftovers are amazing it seems like the band jammed all the hostility in those small spaces of music, pressure bleeds all over the place to be honest.

The musicianship however is brilliant, Nile has insane musicians indeed and they do their best to show it off, I just wish they had a better structure to execute but life's a bitch. Another good thing is the production, it's a little dry and you'll have to be orginizing your volume each time you toss this album to your player, but the clarity of the instruments and vocals is just amazing to say the least.

So anyway, the album is not THAT bad I guess?it's just that Nile was ten times better than this, their last album had at least 4 epic songs and this one has none; Ithyphallic it's just a collection of what we could see as either leftovers of past albums or as something the label desperately wanted to achieve not caring for the band at all?just like what happened with Malevolent Creation

For fans and collectors only!