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The Gauntlet: You know, I had a pair of shoes exactly like that [black on black converse].
Dallas Toler-Wade: Weird. [death metal bellow] Mm, anyway.
The Gauntlet: But then someone stepped on the inseam and it ripped all the way up, so I switched to these. But I suppose these look worse than those do, now, so I might as well switch back.
Dallas Toler-Wade: Well, my first pair I just wore out the bottoms on them. I usually wear steel toes at shows, especially like Ozzfest, because of all this heavy shit around [gestures at his practice amplifier]. Definitely wear the steel toes. Feet, you know, gotta have ‘em (laughs). Come in handy.
Gauntlet: They certainly do. You reserve the Converse for the off-dates, then?
Dallas: Yeah. Gotta try to feet the foot fungus factor down, you know, don’t want to wear the same shoes all the time for hours and hours.
Gauntlet: Right, right. I imagine those breathe better than the steel toes do.
Dallas: Just a little.
Gauntlet: I’ve never worn steel toes, but I imagine they tie in well with the phallus, power, and all that business.
Dallas: Sure.
Gauntlet: So how has the tour been going, all in all?
Dallas: It’s going great. It’s going really well. The Ozzfest shows, we didn’t know what the hell to expect, but it’s really cool, because everybody there is just excited to be at a music show, you know? It’s just a really good, youthful feeling in the air, I would have to say. It’s cool, it’s cool. There’s a lot of variety, different types of bands and music to check out. So, you know, it’s a killer musical fest and it’s especially diverse this year. That’s awesome.
Gauntlet: And so this is your first time on Ozzfest, right?
Dallas: Right.
Gauntlet: Have you done anything like this before, where you’ll have a tour and then off dates accordingly?
Dallas: Oh, yeah, we’ve been doing off shows just like today. This is between Ozzfest shows where we do a headlining show and play an hour and twenty minutes. Because we only have a twenty minute set at Ozzfest shows.
Gauntlet: Really.
Dallas: Yeah. But that’s ok; it’s our first time, so….
Gauntlet: I guess that’s true. So how do you decide what you’re going to play? Aside from the time difference, is there something else you take into consideration when you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to play in each set?
Dallas: Yeah, we definitely want to play stuff where everybody will hear a good portion of our colors, you know. So we play ‘Sarcophagus’, because, I mean, that’s our arena rock song. So we play stuff like that, but we also play the title track from our new album, ‘Ithyphallic’, we’re playing that. We’re opening the show with ‘Sacrifice Unto Sebek’ so you get a taste of us firing on all cylinders all out of the gate, with some fast blasting and shit. And we finish it out with ‘Black Seeds of Vengeance’.
Gauntlet: Some good diversity there, yeah.
Dallas: If we had time for one more song we could include a ‘…Nephren-Ka’ song in there and then we would be playing something from every album.
Gauntlet: You know, it’s surprising to hear you say that you’ve got that much diversity in it, because if you’re playing at Ozzfest, especially with such a short set, I would have imagined that you’d sample more heavily from the recent stuff. But it’s good to hear that you’re branching out.
Dallas: Well, I mean, ‘Black Seeds…’ will probably always be our closing song. ‘Black Seeds’ or one of the more epic, slow, long end of the album songs we’ve been known to do these last two. But ‘Black Seeds’ will always come towards the end of the set: either the last song or the song before the last. We’ll always play ‘Black Seeds’. Always gonna play it (laughs).
Gauntlet: So, have you guys been getting a good response at Ozzfest? With the first time crowd, you know, are they prepared for the Nile ‘explosion of death’?
Dallas: I think so, I think so. Even if they weren’t prepared for it, they were enlightened.
Gauntlet: Well, since it’s your first time on this tour—you’ve played Wacken, right?
Dallas: Yeah, we played Wacken in 2003.
Gauntlet: Ok. So, comparing the big arena to the smaller venue like this one, does one or the other seem to suit Nile’s style better, to you?
Dallas: I would say that, to us, that really doesn’t matter. As long as we’re able to put on the right production and have proper sound for the day, I think that’s what makes us the most happy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a smaller place or a bigger place. There are a lot of small places that sound really good, there’re a lot of big places that sound really good. And, of course, the other way: there are a lot of places that don’t sound so good. I think that’s the really important thing. We want to perform the best that we can and have the means to do so, and not have anything in the way of that, concerning the stage, size of the stage, security or the barricade, even. You know, we want everyone to have a good show, that’s the most important thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s ten people or 10,000 people—whatever. We want to play loud and we want it to sound as good as we can make it sound, given the circumstances that are beyond our control. (laughs)
Gauntlet: Right. I’ve heard conflicting things about Nile live. Some people say it was amazing and everything they hoped it would be, but others say it was really muddy and bad. And I’m thinking, ‘well, can you really blame the band, on that particular date, if their sound really isn’t what it should be?’
Dallas: Right, right. And you know, we’ve learned, especially in the past two albums and the growth in popularity of the band, that you can’t satisfy everyone, so we don’t really bother trying. We satisfy ourselves musically and the people that are into the music are going to like it and the others are not going to like it. And we’re not going to stay up at night thinking about stuff like that. We play what we want to play. So there are going to people out there who are going to be like, ‘Oh, it was the greatest thing ever,’ or, ‘It sounded like shit.’ You’re going to get that. And the more popular you become as a band, the more you’re going to have that.
Karl: It’s just mathematical.
Dallas: Sheer probability and mathematics.
Gauntlet: Proportions and all that?
Karl: I believe so. ‘Cause, you know, if one out of ten people like your band, there are still nine more that don’t’ know, don’t care, or don’t give a fuck. But if you’ve got one of those ten people buying your record then that’s fucking great.
Gauntlet: True, that’s a lot of people.
Karl: Mm-hmm. That’s also a lot of people that hate your fucking band, though.
(Laughter)
Gauntlet: Also true.
Dallas: Yeah, we’ve got our good ones and our bad ones, since the beginning, and it’s all gotten better or worse at the same time, just growing. Everybody’s got their favorite album and all that, so, it’s cool so long as we’ve got something (laughs), something that people can dig. But if not, we’re not going to lose sleep over it, since we like it.
Gauntlet: Continuing then, on that. This is the second album you’ve had with this producer, correct? What did you like differently about this pair of albums, from the production standpoint, as opposed to previous ones?
Dallas: I think that since Neil [Kernon] has been on board you can really hear what’s going on in the music a little better. ‘…Shrines’ was an improvement from ‘Black Seeds…’ with a little bit more crunchy guitar, maybe a little bit more attacking. We definitely wanted that, but we found that after listening to it for a while, with all that extra crunchy-crunchy in there, it just tires your ears out. Your ears are shot when you’re done listening to it. So we wanted something that was still heavy and aggressive sounding but clean enough so that you could hear it.
Gauntlet: Discernable.
Dallas: Yeah, exactly. We wanted people to be able to hear the notes that we’re playing, you know, and hear the drumbeats and stuff. There’s definitely an improvement, too, I would say, from ‘Annihilation…’ to ‘Ithyphallic’ in the drum department. This time the drums are a little bit more big and cavernous, more like they kind of were on some previous albums. We wanted a bigger drum sound than we had on ‘Annihilation…’. ‘Annihilation…’ was a really guitar-heavy mix—this time the guitars are still in there and you can still hear them, but the drums are much bigger and much more prominent.
Gauntlet: That’s true. I remember when I first got ‘Annihilation…’—I bought the collector’s tin, that thing—and the guitars just blew me away. They were towering, monstrous, fantastic. But thinking about my impression of that one and ‘Ithyphallic’, the drums are a lot more present on ‘Ithyphallic’. And at first I was a little disappointed, because I wanted more of that guitar laceration—
Dallas: (laughs) Right, right.
Gauntlet: But, I think, overall that one’s going to wear well with time.
Dallas: Definitely, definitely. And we wanted an album that you could turn up loud. Because a lot of albums that are really fast with dense situations, when you turn them up loud your ears compress and you can’t really hear it. But with the drums driving the beat a little more, when you turn it up you’re going to get your wall of guitars and you’re going to be able to hear it still, because the drums are still putting everything in their places, so to speak. So I’ve noticed that ‘Ithyphallic’ can get a lot louder before it starts to distort.
Gauntlet: I’ll have to test that out.
Dallas: Yeah, it gets loud, man. (laughs) We wanted a mix that you could turn up loud, because there are a lot of mixes that you can’t turn up loud. They’re good and you can hear everything, but we wanted to just get that real power. So the bass is toned down just a little bit, too.
Gauntlet: Ok. Going back to the tour plan, I saw that you guys were in New Zealand on tour recently. Was that the first time you’d been there?
Dallas: Yes. It was the first time we’d been there, and we did some Australian dates as well, and that was the second time for us in Australia. And it went really well, we were really surprised. Didn’t know what to expect.
Gauntlet: I’ve got a friend in Tasmania who’s really big into Nile—
Dallas: Oh, cool.
Gauntlet: I don’t think he made it out to the show, but he was rather disappointed about that. It was interesting to see that you guys had gone ‘down under’, as they say, since not so many bands do that.
Dallas: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s really picking up over there. They’ve gotten Hate Eternal over there a year or two ago, and it’s more and more. Who else was going over there? Was really close to our show, actually.
Gauntlet: I saw that Sunn0))) and Boris were over there, actually.
Dallas: Wow. I know that, let’s see, there was somebody else, too.
Gauntlet: Dark Tranquillity went.
Dallas: Right. This was a heavy, heavy band. Something brutal, can’t remember. Was it Deicide? No—it was Suffocation, that’s who. They did really well over there, too. So it’s picking up.
Gauntlet: Good to show the Aussies some love.
Dallas: Yeah, they’re into it, man. Great shows, great people.
Gauntlet: Good. Now, that brings up another question: have you guys ever played in Egypt?
Dallas: No. [But] we definitely want to go someday just to check it out, just to see it. But we have not heard anything about any offers for Egypt. Our manager would have told us, for sure. We all would have gotten CC’ed on it, you know (laughs). So, no we haven’t seen anything like that yet. Maybe one day…. But we definitely would like to visit there and embrace that culture a little. That would be fucking amazing.
Gauntlet: Yeah, sort of a culmination.
Dallas: I think it would be very inspiring for us to be there.
Gauntlet: Mm-hmm. Well, I think we’d all look forward to that. Speaking back to the issue of the phallus and of course the album ‘Ithyphallic’, the meaning is of course obvious, but the choice seems like a shift from albums that you guys have had in the past. ‘Amongst the Catacombs…’, ‘In Their Darkened Shrines’, ‘Annihilation of the Wicked’, and then just, ‘Ithyphallic’. So, how did that name come about?
Dallas: Well, originally the name came about when Nile was getting started, making local flyers and stuff. And you wanted something to set you apart from the pack, to set your band apart on the flyer. So ‘Ithyphallic Metal’ kind of came up. and when we were writing ‘Annihilation…’, at one point I said, ‘well, why don’t we call it ‘Ithyphallic’?’ But the label at the time was not into it, they did not like that at all, so we decided for ‘Annihilation of the Wicked’. The song, I think, had already been finished and it just really had the kind of title-track feel to it. ‘Annihilation of the Wicked’ kind of capped off or gave you an idea about the record, you know what I mean? But we really wanted to do the ‘Ithyphallic’ thing, and then Karl had some ideas for the song, so we were like, ‘cool, we’re with a new label now’, and they pretty much said, ‘we don’t give a damn what you do, so long as it’s good.’ And they were able to help us out with the artwork and all that, they were able to find a Pazuzu stature with a nice semi-chub—that was exactly what we needed (laughs)—and some slaves dragging it across the desert. That was actually what we wanted for a while, always an idea of ours, conceptually, for the album cover as well. We’ve had ‘Ithyphallic’ tour shirts before and it’s just a name that got stuck on us and we’ve kind of kept it alive, so we just wanted to name the album ‘Ithyphallic’. Kind of a horns up, too, to the guys in our local scene back in South Carolina that come out to the shows and support Nile, and regionally at some other places as well. So…definitely erect [throws horns].
Gauntlet: Gives ‘cock rock’ a whole new meaning.
Dallas: (laughs) Right.
Gauntlet: So, what was it about ‘Ithyphallic’ that was so unpalatable to Relapse? It’s not like they don’t have their explicit grindcore and ‘Intestular Gutfucks’ or something….
Dallas: Right, well, you know, we’d had a couple of problems with that before, with them. Concerning ‘Black Seeds of Vengeance’, even. They wanted us to call it ‘Seeds of Vengeance’. All this weird stuff, and we said, ‘well, that sounds like ‘Screaming For Vengeance’, no, the songs is ‘Black Seeds of Vengeance’. That’s what we want and that’s what it’s going to be.’ So there were a couple little conflicts here or there concerning other things as well. And while we were happy to have the opportunity to work with them—I mean, they’re great, they’re a good label, they really are—we’re glad to have an opportunity to step it up a notch with Nuclear Blast. And have a little bit more freedom and not have somebody… like we would give a shit what anybody told us anyway, right? It just feels better when somebody’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. Just do it. Do it by this date.’ You know? (laughs) That’s great, we can handle that.
Gauntlet: I’ve talked to a couple other bands who’ve signed with Nuclear Blast and they’ve mentioned a lot how it’s about, ‘Yeah, go do your thing, we’re bringing you on board so you can expand and stretch’, you know?
Dallas: Yeah.
Gauntlet: Definitely nice to hear. Continuing on the new album: I was reading some of the lyrics, like to the song ‘The Essential Salts’, and the lyrics to that song just go on and on and on. And of course, there are the invocations, I guess is what I’d call them, that are obviously not in English. Do you guys have any problems trying to memorize all these things when you’re playing with all these lyrics? It’s not quite your average speech.
Dallas: Right, right. We’re pretty used to it. Karl’s an avid reader and I read quite a bit as well, and I think that helps when it comes to memorizing all this stuff. But I think once you get it down in the rehearsal room, you’ve got the guitar there in your hand , all the parts are in place and everything’s nice and tight, you get used to doing all the vocals and stuff like that. Playing it live or whatever or sometimes rehearsing before we go into the studio. It just kind of falls into place. For instance, if I were to play just guitar I would probably forget my part. If I was to just sing I would probably forget. But once you learn it together, that one way, it just stays that way. And yeah, now and then, everybody fucks up, you know, you might forget a word here or there or flip a couple of lines, you know. It happens. But no, for the most part it hasn’t been too difficult. Any of the stuff that we put on ourselves is a chance to grow, so we just look at is as a growing tool, when it comes to song arrangements, the lyrics, everything. It just kind of goes hand in hand.
Gauntlet: I would say that’s true. Especially on songs like ‘Lashed to the Slave Stick’, the vocals and the guitar seem to come so well together. And usually, you know, you’ll have a riff or a vocal line in your head, but with that song, for me, at least, the two just slide together and sound like they’re made for each other.
Dallas: Right, cool. Thanks. (laughs) Yeah, that one flows pretty well. With ‘Salts’ I wanted really fast, really rapid-fire vocals, there’s are lot of lyrics there. So I wanted it to still be a fast ripper song and just putting it together I had the lyrics in front of me and worked it verse for verse and got all the parts for each lyric section and worked the riffs up from the lyrics.
Gauntlet: That was a question I had for later but might as well ask it now. It looks like most of the songwriting credits are attributed to one person, but as far as the vocals, you’ve had you do vocals, Karl do vocals, other people do vocals—how do you approach that, with who’s going to be doing them at each part? Does each person write those parts?
Dallas: No, Karl writes, like, almost all of the lyrics. I write a few of the songs. I wrote the music for ‘Salts’, ‘As He Creates, So He Destroys’, ‘Language of the Shadows’, ‘Lashed to the Slave Stick’, ‘Burning Pits of the Duat’, and so on and so forth. Throughout the albums as I’ve written a few. I’ve only written a few lyrics for the band, because, quite frankly, I like what Karl’s doing. Know what I mean? So yeah, he’s written everything on the last two albums, an I only wrote one, ‘Wind of Horus’, the lyrics and music for that one, on ‘…Shrines’. But we really like working with the lyrics to get the idea s for the songs, because if gives you a direction, instead of just going in there and trying to put some riffs together and then later on call it a song and try to put vocals on top of it. We work it from the ground up. How are the lyrics making you feel, you know? What rhythm patterns are you getting from those lyrics? That’s what I do, I work it verse to verse. Get a good verse hook, get a good chorus hook if there’s a chorus, and I don’t think there is really in ‘Salts’ (laughs). Just [waggles tongue and growls] till the end. But whatever the song’s calling for, really. If you want something a little bit more cruiser or bludgeoning, like that, or something that’s got more hook or pop in it, or something slower, crunchy, doomy, just whatever. Also, like you were saying, concerning who does the vocal part. I usually get stuck with the fast, choppy, low ones or the mid-range ones. Karl’s got this undead zombie thing going on that he does that works out really well. It wouldn’t be a Nile album without that, you know what I mean? And with Jon [Vesano] in the past, Chief [Spires], and the guy that we’re working with now, Chris [Lollis]—he’s got cool vocals. He actually did a couple parts in ‘Eat of the Dead’ and he’s did some back-up on ‘As He Creates, So He Destroys’, and I think he did one other song. He just came down to the studio and we said, ‘Hey, you feel like doing some guest vocals?’ He said, ‘Hell, yeah, let’s hook it up.’ We were able to audition him right there and we were like, ‘That was great!’ and Neil was like [pushes record button] ‘That was great!’ (laughs) So we were happy about that. I knew he kind of wanted to sing and play, too, so….
Gauntlet: Speaking of songs, I read that it took a year to work out ‘Multitude of Foes’?
Dallas: Yeah…. Actually, what really happened with that was that I had a lot of different versions of that song and we had a couple of guys in the band at the time that were not really seeing eye to eye on these other parts. So I just kept adjusting the parts until everybody could agree. And that’s what I would do now, too. If I bring something to the table and somebody doesn’t like it, just tell me and I’ll change it. I’ll try to think of something else. I’m leaving my ego at the door. When we walk in the band room, egos are at the door. You walk in there and you make the music and contribute to it, and if somebody tells you they don’t like what you’re doing, then…[shrugs]. So, that’s basically what happened with ‘Multitude of Foes’. It just kept going through version after version and nobody was really seeing what I was going for at the time. But finally everybody could agree on that, you know, and that’s what happened.
Gauntlet: Ok. And, as far as members, now that you’ve got George, it seems like he’s really settling in—is that for the long haul, do you think?
Dallas: I think that’s for the long haul, for sure. I mean, he’s the first drummer to do two albums, and that’s definitely starting off on the right foot, for sure. We’ve already done massive touring with that guy and he doesn’t feel like a new guy to us when we’re playing with George. He’s a real cool guy, easy to get along with, and we consider him a good friend, too, and that always helps.
Gauntlet: Yeah, certainly does. It seems like you guys have really gone through the drummers and bassists as well. Is there a reason behind that?
Dallas: I wouldn’t say a reason. I don’t really want to get into that too much. it happened and we’re happy with the line-up we have now and that’s what’s important.
Karl: Everything happens for a reason.
Dallas: Yeah. And hopefully they’re happy with what they’re doing, too.
Karl: You know, we don’t keep anybody against their will here, you know? I mean, come on.
Dallas: (laughs) Yeah, exactly.
Karl: If you don’t want to play, then we won’t make you.
Gauntlet: Yeah. Well, I’d say the synergy of this line-up is really tight. I’ve been quite impressed with it so far.
Dallas: Thanks, man. We’re really happy with it. Me and Karl gelled, right away, ten years ago, you know—
Karl: First night.
Dallas: Yeah, first night. Nile was doing some stuff that interested me, as far as pushing boundaries in guitar playing, and that interested me and reminded me of some of the stuff I was doing before Nile. And that was the thing, it just fit. The style and everything just fit, right away. And here we are…ten years later. (laughs)
Gauntlet: Yeah. Well, if there is anything I will miss about Tony [Laureano] is that he had this buzzsaw cymbals that I saw in the video for ‘Execration Text’. And those were hot. Those made me want to start playing drums again.
Dallas: Right. That’s definitively him, yup.
Gauntlet: (laughs) They were unnecessary, but definitely cool. You mentioned something about what you were doing before Nile and that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. I know that Karl has his side stuff and it seems that there’s something going on with you and Lecherous Nocturne in the past—
Dallas: Yeah, right. ‘Adoration of the Blade’. I did session drum work for that and I produced the album.
Gauntlet: I liked that album.
Dallas: Oh, cool. Thanks, man.
Gauntlet: I thought the first song in particular was just, ‘Bam!’, right out of the gate.
Dallas: Oh, yeah. ‘Kampagne’.
Gauntlet: Yeah, yeah. So, aside from that, before Nile, along the way, what has brought you to here?
Dallas: Oh, well, I would say about the ten years or so before Nile—well, safely, safely I would say more like eight years…. In fact, I can remember exactly when I got started with the band. But I was in a few bands in my local hometown and everybody basically felt the pressures of the world and ended up, you know, getting married and getting ‘the job’ and all that stuff. And that’s fine by me if that’s what’s going to make a person happy…just let me know (laughs). Don’t string me on for three or four years. That’s all I would ask from people back then. But all the shit and things just happened for a reason. I had heard Nile when I was playing in one of my other bands back in ’93, ’94. And we were actually scheduled to play a show with them, but our bass player kind of dropped the ball on getting all that arranged with the sound and the flyers and all that stuff. He said he was going to do it, but he didn’t do it. So they ended up playing anyway and I didn’t even end up going to the show. But after, probably about two or three more years of that kind of stuff going on I talked to a good friend of mine that used to play drums in a band with me and he basically told me that he knew of two bands that were looking for a guitar player. And Nile was one of them. So I went and tried out for Nile first and didn’t even bother trying out for the other band. I was like, ‘This is definitely what I’m into,’ right here. The big movie epic soundtracks and all that stuff, all that was kind of similar to the stuff I was doing in a way, just more Greek mythology oriented instead. It was cool, was really cool. And the Lecherous Nocturne thing—they’re based out of Greenville, South Carolina, they live within blocks of me and Karl, and Karl called me up one day and said, ‘Look, Lecherous Nocturne needs a drummer.’ We had just come off the last American headlining tour and I had a little extra cash so I said, ‘Well, I’m going to buy a drum set.’ Because that’s actually my first instrument. [holds hand a few feet from the ground] I’ve been playing drums since I was, like, this tall. I got into guitar later when I was about 13 or 14. Playing with guys Pete Hammoura, Derek Roddy, Laureano, and Kolias, I really just wanted to blast. I wanted a piece of the blast.
Gauntlet: Yeah. It’s hard not to listen to that and not want to blast.
Dallas: I had gotten myself to a level, right before I started selling my drum stuff to get more guitars, where I could hang with the Slayer stuff. Slayer, Dark Angel, and shit like that. I got more into the guitar, started writing stuff, got more into that, and [the drums] just went more by the wayside. And I decided that it would be cool to…have a drummer (laughs), rather than being the drummer. But, you know, just the inspiration from all the death metal, the blastbeats, and the speed, and some of the black metal, too, I really wanted to do it. And Karl said, ‘Hey, man, Lecherous Nocturne needs a drummer.’ So I worked with them for, I don’t know, say, eight or nine months. And then we started doing shows and worked up all the material and went in the next year and laid down the drum tracks. and then they practiced with the drum tracks for a little while to get a little tighter and then they went in and recorded the guitars. And it was a nice opportunity for me to get a credit for session drumming and a credit for producing the album. On a very minimal budget, might I add.
Gauntlet: Where was this production done?
Dallas: Sound Lab.
Gauntlet: And that’s not your studio…
Dallas: No, actually, it belongs to Bob Moore, and that’s where we’ve recorded all the Nile albums.
Gauntlet: Ok, ok. That’s why it sounded familiar.
Dallas: He’s in Columbia, South Carolina, about 90 miles down the road. Not too far and he’s got reasonable rates, and he’s not one of those guys who’s sitting there looking at his watch, you know what I mean? He’ll stay there, he’ll put in the 15 hour days, he’ll do what it takes to do…
Gauntlet: To do it right.
Dallas: Yeah. It was a lot of fun, man. And actually, Chris, the guy who’s playing bass, he plays guitar in Lecherous Nocturne.
Gauntlet: Oh, ok.
Dallas: Yeah. I knew that those guys could handle it. So I asked Chris to do it and he was like, ‘Hell, yeah.’
Gauntlet: Hah. Why not, right?
Dallas: Yeah.
Gauntlet: Well, aside from Lecherous Nocturne and Nile, of course, the only Carolinian metal band I know if is Dreamscapes of the Perverse, have you heard of them?
Dallas: No.
Gauntlet: Well, those are the only three I’m aware of—is there a good local scene there?
Dallas: There used to be, you know, back in the late 80’s, and early to mid 90’s. You had the whole Raleigh, North Carolina scene. Bands like Eldritch Horror, Aftermath AD, those are just two that ring a bell, and the ones that I would probably view as more popular in the scene. And, you know, there is still some local stuff going on in Greenville, too, where we’re staying. Actually, Chief’s band, Noxious, they practice in the same room that we jam in. They’re in the same rehearsal area where we all have storage bins. His band practices there, so we see him every now and then. And there are quite a bit of musicians, quite a healthy amount in the Carolinian area, I would say. Not too much of a scene, club-wise, but there’s definitely some talent there.
Gauntlet: Mm, good. Back to the new album, then. I noticed, or at least, the feeling that I got was that there’s been a bit of a shift away from the overt Egyptian influences. It seemed on ‘Annihilation…’ that you were sort of separating the two instead of putting them all in together. You know, you’d have the introduction, some segue passages, then the death metal, and then some segue passages again. And on this one you’re bringing in some of the bigger, epic stuff, but it still seems like there’s some separation. Is this intentional, or do you see it this way at all?
Dallas: I don’t know. I would say most of the stuff we do is pretty organic. The only thing that we know going into new material is that we don’t want to make the same album twice. Which we have been accused of already, we’ve been accused of it. But I think people are looking at the wrong things, I think that they just hear that it’s Nile and think that we’re doing the same thing over and over again and that’s not the case at all. A lot of the guitar work is very different on this album. Not to mention that Karl’s 11-string fretless is on ‘Eat of the Dead’ and that thing’s also on the album throughout, in different places. So we have a few new elements, and we wanted to do a few more things this time. We wanted a little bit more moodiness and we wanted a little more darkness….
Gauntlet: Atmosphere.
Dallas: Yeah, a little more atmosphere, a little bit more of a dark, slithery, evil kind of thing. I would say that ‘Annihilation…’ was definitely more of a savage kind of album, where it was just like [tiger roar] and beating the shit out, you know. This one’s a little bit more…spooky. You feel it crawling up your spine.
Gauntlet: Yeah, yeah. Kind of brooding, too.
Dallas: Right. So, we just go into it knowing that we don’t want to do the same thing and, usually, whatever happens happens.
Gauntlet: Mm. Ok. I was reading liner notes again for the song ‘Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten’, the story that goes along with that and all the stuff wrapped up in it is pretty remarkable. But it’s interesting that it’s one of the fewer songs that doesn’t deal with Egyptology. I don’t know whether you were involved with the concept of bringing that about…?
Dallas: Not really, but it’s a kind of the similar thing, as you said, about ‘Ithyphallic’ and the lyrical content. ‘Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten’ is very H.P. Lovecraft influenced, and Lovecraft has been in this band in various songs for a long time, actually. And yeah, it’s a very epic end-of-the-world, just that sense of doom, impending doom, you know, that was just captured in that song. I’m a Lovecraft fan, but Karl’s probably the biggest Lovecraft fan in the world, and that’s pretty much how that came about (laughs).
Gauntlet: It does seem fitting. Even if the source of the inspiration isn’t necessarily the same, the tone of it certainly fit.
Dallas: Right, right. And Lovecraft, too, was obviously into Egypt, too (laughs). Kind of into the darker side of things as well.
Gauntlet: Yeah. And then, in keeping with the ideology and so forth, obviously Karl is a lot of what drives this, but….The Egyptian influences, are you drawn to these or are you kind of along for the ride?
Dallas: I’m into it as well. I actually missed my book by a couple of days. I ordered a book, the latest Wilbur Smith book; he has this series of historical fiction, I guess you could call it.
Gauntlet: I’m recognizing the name, yes.
Dallas: He wrote River God and he’s written a few other things. My book didn’t come before we left so it’ll be waiting on me when we get back home. But yeah, we’re both definitely into it, but he’s been reading and doing this shit for a very long time. We both dig the History Channel.
Gauntlet: That is always a staple at my house.
Dallas: Definitely always something interesting to learn on there.
Gauntlet: Always. So, are you drawn to that specifically? You mentioned something about ancient Greece as well—is it just the ancient pantheons?
Dallas: Pretty much. That as well as the music and pushing the boundaries in the music, and playing some heavy stuff that sends chills up your spine. All those things are what attracted me to Nile. And, not to mention, the fact of just being with some serious musicians who really want to want it. Want to make good albums, want to play shows. That was a big selling factor (laughs).
Gauntlet: Yeah. I’ve got some friends in bands going nowhere really fast and have been for a while, and seeing them sort of languish is disappointing. So I can certainly understand how you’d want to get somewhere, as you certainly have. Also, I went to New York recently and was in The Met and they had this entire room devoted to a section of a copy from The Book of the Dead.
Dallas: Oh, wow.
Gauntlet: Circa 1000 BCE, and it apparently had been in a tomb with some high-ranking woman, and it was all along the walls and stuff. Just fantastic.
Dallas: That’s awesome. I think Karl actually went there. Anyway, I would like to see that. My copy of The Book of the Dead doesn’t even have a cover on it anymore (laughs).
Gauntlet: It was impressive. There was also this thing called the Temple of Dendur, which is a temple moved stone for stone from the Nile to The Met. And it’s not really this big place that you can walk into but it’s pretty impressive. When I was there I was thinking about Nile. ‘Man, those guys would probably think this is pretty awesome.’
Dallas: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing, you know, their construction of buildings and monuments, how it was possible, and how many people probably died in the process of it.
Gauntlet: I can’t imagine. Not only the labor but the heat.
Dallas: [nods]
Gauntlet: It was 97 degrees driving here and I thought, ‘Well, this is appropriate weather for Nile’—
Dallas: (laughs and gives a Nile roar)
Gauntlet: It’s always really cold when Scandinavian metal bands come through. It was, I think, April or something, and had been 60 degrees and then The Haunted, Scar Symmetry, Dark Tranquillity, and those guys came through and it just plummeted 30 degrees in, like, two days. And then after that it was fine again.
Dallas: Well, maybe there is something weird going on.
Gauntlet: The winds of fortune.
Dallas: Yeah. Except on our tour bus. I was actually making comments about how we have the damn Icelandic tour bus, because it always stays cranked down to, like, 60 degrees in there. Especially for the Ozzfest shows, man. Yesterday it had to have been 110 or 115 on the stage. And the sun is just beating right down, man. Usually it’s not like that. Usually the sun is either above us or behind us, but not that day, man. We were facing it. [Squints]
Gauntlet: Hah. And you guys went on pretty early, didn’t you?
Dallas: Yeah. We’re in a rotating slot, so each gig we’ll go the next band up until we get to the top and then we go back to the bottom again. But usually by the second or third band that place is packed, man. There’re a lot of people there.
Gauntlet: Good, good. I would hope so, wouldn’t want people to miss Nile.
Dallas: Even when we went on first that one day, even by the second song it was pretty full.
Gauntlet: I’ve never been to Ozzfest myself. Something about the atmosphere just seemed a little off, for me. But I have been to a couple larger tours like that and it seems like a…strange atmosphere. But hey, if it’s getting the music out there and people seem to be enjoying it.
Dallas: Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea of it. We want to expand the base a little bit and turn some people onto what we’re doing that may not necessarily have ever even heard it at all, or anything like it. And there’s always people out there that are looking for something different. At the end of the show, there was a sea of horns as far as I could see. So that’s good (laughs).
Gauntlet: Definitely good.
Dallas: We really want to captivate everybody and keep them right there if we can, you know.
Gauntlet: Back to the influences a bit. Including the Greek or the Egyptian, do you have a favorite story or deity within those pantheons?
Dallas: That’s a good question. I always had a thing about Prometheus. You know, he was the one who got tortured to death for showing humans how to use fire.
Gauntlet: Mm-hmm. Entrails ripped out.
Dallas: Yeah, yeah. Daily. Vultures just picking away at him and he’s kept alive.
Gauntlet: Brutal.
Dallas: I think that was always one of my favorites, even though that’s not an Egyptian thing. But I have many different interests and so does Karl. He’s pretty much the history guy, so you could ask him about anything and he’d be able to tell you. So that would be one of my favorites. I’ve always thought that the concept of a Sun God was really cool and very fitting, and, in a lot of ways makes more sense than the other stuff that you would about as far as deities or whatever. I mean, there’s actually proof that there’s a sun, you know. And it eateth upon your face when you’re at Ozzfest.
(laughter)
Gauntlet: And what gives life if not the sun? There’s water, but….
Dallas: Yeah, can’t live without it.
Gauntlet: And then, with the writing, obviously Nile has that Egyptian sound to it—is that natural for you or do you have to put yourself in mind, like, ‘Alright, I’ve got to write something that would sound good for Nile’?
Dallas: Yeah, but at the same time when we’re not thinking about that is when it just kind of happens. We write the songs from the lyrics, so it just kind of happens that way naturally. Some of the songs are less, say, Egyptian-sounding with whatever scale or progression or--
Gauntlet: Tonality?
Dallas: Yeah, whatever tonality it might have. And some of the other ones are places where we’re going that we really want to break the boundaries of that. Sometimes we just want to be a death metal band. Sometimes with songs like ‘Eat of the Dead’ we don’t even want the guitar to be super in-tune. We want it to just be slightly out so it will be eerie-sounding and weird. I think that’s really creepy. Karl with the 11-string fretless—that’s us breaking out of the boundaries of the frets. I match it up with the tremolo guitar. So we’re able to go extra sharp or extra flat to give it more tension or more sadness. So we try to not stay to into the boxes, the certain scale progression boxes that you have: your minor boxes, blues boxes, all that stuff. And all that’s relative. I think you should learn as much as you can about all the tonalities. And find yourself in there somewhere. I think that’s what we’ve kind of done as guitar players. We’ve studied different stuff and we found the stuff that we like and the stuff that we feel fits for what we do. And we’re always learning more and always expanding on that and finding different things to play. Different scales, patterns, composition ideas, progressions, or whatever. We’re always working on that.
Gauntlet: I do really commend your ability to take a guitar, which is—at least in our modern tradition—a very Western instrument and put it into that distinctly non-Western tradition. I was sitting down with my own guitar, saying, ‘Ok, aside from bending a note up half a step, what else works with that sound?’ (laughs). So it’s impressive that you’ve been able to do it for so long and keep coming up with new stuff.
Dallas: Yeah, you know, there’s a whole universe within these 24 frets here. And I feel that now, as a guitar player, I’m just starting to tap the surface a little bit. And, for me, personally, over the last couple albums I think it’s been more about composition. While I was working on new chops and ideas and whatever, I wanted for everything compositionally to make sense and not have anything out of place with everything flowing together nicely. We find a lot of inspiration from movies and stuff like that as well. The big epic compositions that movies have with their soundtracks. Big, big stuff. ‘Ben Hur’, ‘The Ten Commandments’, stuff like that. And also some of the silly Lovecraft movies that were made, like ‘Reanimator From Beyond’. There’s some really shredding stuff in that, if you listen to it. Some of that stuff is really cool. So we like to be inspired by that stuff, too, and we just try to keep those doors open, you know, and we’ll try anything. And ‘Ithyphallic’ is actually in a lot of ways like that. It’s kind of our proof that we’re willing to try different things, too, you know what I mean?
Gauntlet: Mm-hmm, yeah. So, does that mean, when you’re talking about new chops, that you’re already trying to work on something else after ‘Ithyphallic’?
Dallas: I always work on stuff. Whether it’s my own actual technique of playing—and I spend a lot of time on that, too—or, you know, things just come to the head. Little ideas here and there. I usually don’t really work too much on song ideas unless I have some lyrics to work with, but that doesn’t mean you won’t come up with a great solo section or you won’t come up with a great harmony-melody thing that would work in a song that had some verse/chorus/verse/chorus. You could throw all those in there, too, and it’d be great. So we just like to have no boundaries on it.
Gauntlet: Right. With the movies, then, what do you think of movies like ‘300’ or ‘Troy’, things like that?
Dallas: I thought ‘300’ was a great movie. I thought it was really good.
Gauntlet: Yeah? I enjoyed it. I read some negative reviews that were calling it just really barbaric, low-brow, and über-nationalistic, and I thought those were really just missing the point.
Dallas: Well, yeah, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? That’s what they were trying to do, they were trying to captivate the feeling of the time that it was, the mindset of the people, and the phallus. The conquering of it all, [roars] the power. You know, there was so much power pulsing through people’s veins back then and it was so damn hot outside all the time. Just nuts. And they captured that, they definitely captured that. I don’t know that there will be a more real representation of that for a while, that’s my opinion. They pretty much hit it on the head, and it went down something like that. (laughs)
Gauntlet: Maybe not the guys with the saw-hands and stuff, but the mood of it all.
Dallas: Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Gauntlet: One of the final points I had—I was reading Revolver and Karl was talking about the song ‘Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against He Who Is In The Water’. He was trying to imagine this guy scrabbling around in his boat trying to find the papyrus so he can read it before the crocodile gets him and it really struck me that you guys are having fun, you know? You can be light-hearted about it, even if you are doing really brutal death metal music, and I think that could be lost on some of your fans.
Dallas: Right, well, there’s a lot of people out there that take themselves too seriously. There’s a lot of people out there that take music too seriously. And while we definitely do take what we do seriously—we’re definitely passionate about what we do—it’s still entertainment, man. (laughs) And that’s the bottom line. And a lot of people blur the line in their heads. It’s not just music: it’s movies and games, books. People get so into a certain world and I think that’s ridiculous, I think that’s taking things a little too seriously.
Gauntlet: Hm. Well, that could be part of what helps you guys rock out so much. It’s just entertainment in the end.
Dallas: Yeah. We want to have fun. We want to play heavy, and that’s fun to us.
Karl: Yes. Kind of in the same way that when you’re chopping off a big steak you take the cleaver and go [makes cutting sound and gesture]…and there’s just this sense of satisfaction you get when the cleaver hits meat and bone.
Gauntlet: (laughs) I know that.
Karl: That’s fun. That’s what we’re doing on stage. We’re playing the guitar and we’re attacking people with it.
Gauntlet: Cleaving the steak. I like it, that sounds good. Well, if there is anything else that you would like to add? Comments or thoughts?
Dallas: Just that I hope everybody enjoys the hell out of the new album. I always say that all this trendy flavor of the week shit is going to come and go and metal will always fucking be here because it’s been here for so long. Metal will remain, because it’s not about any of that other bullshit that people think it’s about. It’s just about the music. It’s not about the image, it’s not about any of these other silly things that people think are important. It’s about the music.
Gauntlet: And I would say that’s a pretty good way to go out.
Dallas: Awesome.
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