“I saw this video of a 10-year-old Japanese girl shredding Paul Gilbert solos. I figured, ‘This can’t be about brute physicality. It’s about touching the guitar the right way’”: Karl Sanders on technical epiphanies – and why Nile needs three guitarists

For more than 30 years, South Carolina-based tech-death metal band Nile have conjured swarms of zig-zagging riffs colored with Middle Eastern melodies and lyrics about Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythology, and the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft.

In the process, they’ve gleefully left piles of detached jaws in their wake and compelled hordes of younger guitarists to boost the savagery and complexity of their playing. Now, as Nile prepare to release their 10th studio album, The Underworld Awaits Us All, the blood-red tide has turned. Instead of forging wildly original death spirals of sound, frontman and primary songwriter Karl Sanders has sought guidance from an unlikely new breed of guitar players.

“During the pandemic, when we weren’t touring, I started giving guitar lessons just to get by,” Sanders says. “But it turned out that giving lessons – and seeing what different guys were doing with death metal – expanded my understanding of what the genre has become – and different ways to approach it. A lot of what I learned from my students had a major impact on how I worked on the new album.”

Sanders also took lessons on his own from virtuoso speed demon Rusty Cooley. But the most valuable wisdom Sanders acquired through teaching was that keeping an open mind to previously unexplored techniques can provide revelatory results.

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That realization came after one of his students asked Sanders how he could downpick more than 220 eighth notes per minute. As a dedicated alternate and directional picker, Sanders didn’t have a clue

“When I was young, I went straight from being a huge ZZ Top and Jeff Beck fan to discovering death metal,” he says. “I skipped right over all the thrash bands that did tons of downpicking, and it never became a big part of my style.

“So this student showed me how to hold my right hand so that I could downpick at these insane tempos, and I became determined to do it. A lot of the riffs on this record, which would normally have been done with alternate picking, were downpicked, and that changed the way they sound. I owe it all to that student.”

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Another revelation came when Sanders analyzed his students’ playing and recognized parallels between some of their technique errors and bad habits he had picked up over the decades.

“I noticed how hard a lot of them were attacking the guitar when they played. And I thought about this video of a 10-year-old Japanese girl shredding Paul Gilbert solos. I figured, ‘Okay, this girl is, like, 90 lbs., so playing like this can’t be about hand strength or brute physicality. It’s about having an efficient technique and touching the guitar the right way.’

“I discovered that getting the right sound wasn’t about tightening up every muscle in my body and brutalizing the guitar. It was about applying just enough force necessary because if your body is loose, you can do more with it. I had never thought about that before.”

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Sanders’ efforts to fine-tune his approach after nine albums of scorched-earth shredding became part of a masterplan to keep Nile’s music forward-thinking and viable as he races past the age of 61 (a milestone even Egyptian royalty rarely reached).

Having lost some underground support a decade ago following the departure of longtime guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade, Sanders regained indie cred with Nile’s last album, 2019’s structurally variegated Vile Nilotic Rites.

Like that record, The Underworld Awaits Us All is a ritualistic assault of off-kilter riffs and screeching leads as angular and terrifying as a child running into a packed crowd with a whirring chainsaw. At the same time, there’s added depth and vision to the clamor.

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A multitude of rapid-fire guitars ricochet through a barrage of machine-gun beats in the disarmingly titled Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes, while To Strike with Secret Fang is a catchier and meatier beast that spirals through a maze of black metal-style tremolo picking and semi-melodic lead work.

Then there’s The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka, an exotic Middle Eastern-sounding classical instrumental that segues into the tilted staircase sprint of Overlords of the Black Earth.

“Seeing that Vile Nilotic Rites was the starting point for us, we were really mindful about taking what we did with that album a notch further,” Sanders says. “We had to raise the bar on ourselves. At the same time, we wanted to find ways to make the songs more effective because just going faster, in and of itself, is meaningless. Speed does not necessarily equal momentum. So we had to craft something with great momentum and impact.”

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Sanders and guitarist Brian Kingsland started working on new material in 2021, and by July 2022 they had written 10 songs. Their progress was temporarily thrown into disarray later that year, when Kingsland’s third child was born, and the guitarist decided to stop touring to spend time with his family.

Kingsland agreed to keep writing and recording with Nile, but that left Sanders in the unenviable position of searching for a highly skilled touring guitarist. It was a blessing in disguise.

In early 2024, fellow South Carolina guitarist Zach Jeter (Olkoth, Doomsday Revival) joined Nile for a tour, and the personal and playing chemistry was so good that Sanders invited him to track some leads for The Underworld Awaits Us All.

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“We love Brian, and his contributions to the band are numerous, so there was no way we were going to let him go,” Sanders says. “But Zach was so good [that] I thought, ‘We gotta let this guy play on the record.’ Of course, that means there are three guitarists there, but if this is what the metal universe is handing us, who am I to argue?”

As with their last album, Sanders produced and recorded The Underworld Awaits Us All at his home studio, Serpent Headed in Greenville, South Carolina. He played most of the rhythms with his signature seven-string USA Dean V through an Engl Invader 100-watt head with a Radial Tonebone Plexi pedal and Marshall cabinet miked with Shure SM57s.

For leads, he switched to Splawn Quickrod heads and a Boss Super Overdrive SD-1. He tackled the acoustic parts with a Godin. Disenchanted with the girth of seven-string guitars, Kingsland and Jeter mostly used six-string Jackson guitars and slightly older Engls. When they finished recording, Nile sent the tracks to Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, Whitechapel) to mix and master in Nashville.

Onstage, Sanders loves performing with Jeter, who plays with as much energy as the frontman and whose style perfectly complements Sanders – and with good reason.

“Zach is 20 years younger, so he grew up playing Nile songs,” Sanders says. “As I was recording this stuff, he was learning it, which is great. I never realized I could be this on-point with another guitarist right out of the starting gate. That makes everything more fun.”