Karl Sanders of Nile: Beating People Up and Getting Beat Up Is My Relaxation.

Text and images by Chad Sims.

Nile played a massive two-set show Thursday at The Troc.  The two sets allowed them to play songs that are often left out  including their epic masterpiece, the near 12 minute long, “Unas Slayer of the Gods.”

Gloominous Doom, Sapremia and Curser opened the show.

Before the show I spoke with Nile founding member and guitarist Karl Sanders. Sanders is universally recognized as one of the greatest death metal guitarists of all time. He is also a really humble, nice, funny and sincere guy who was a pleasure to talk to.

How has the tour been going?

So far so good!

What is the fan reaction to the new album (Gate of Sethu)?

We have been touring it overseas.  The European responses have been incredible.  In fact, after we played “Enduring the Eternal Molestation of the Flame” in Moscow they actually gave us the most incredible applause.  We were like, wow!

This tour you are doing two sets.  Why is that?

For a lot of years due to time restrictions inherent in multi-band packages there have been a lot of older songs we haven’t got to play.  There are songs that fans have been asking for.  For the last eight or nine years, there has been this guy in Finland who has been asking for “The Howling of the Jinn,” and after about five years of asking for it he said, “If you don’t play it on this next tour; I am going to break your knee caps.”  The next couple times coming through Finland we still hadn’t played it and he didn’t break my knee caps, but he did express his sincere wish to please, please play it one day.  People have been begging us for “Unas Slayer of the Gods” for a long time which we haven’t played in seven or eight years.

That is the one I am waiting for.

That is quite an undertaking to play that song.  It is twelve minutes long.  If you are playing the Eagles type of music, who cares, or Lynyrd Skynyrd, who cares, that’s not hard to play.  But if you are playing 250 beats per minute, it’s an endurance war.  I still don’t know how George (Kollias, Nile’s drummer) does it.

I always think that death metal drummers are practically running a marathon every show.

He is a specialized kind of athlete to play this kind of music and be on top of it.

And he looks so relaxed doing it.

It is like martial arts.  A relaxed muscle is a faster muscle.  If you are all tense and tight, you are slow as crap.  You have to stay loose and focused.

Are you into martial arts?

I am.

I didn’t know that.  I was just talking to Paul Allender a few weeks back about martial arts.

No kidding? What a great guy he is.

Are you going to be playing any solo material this tour?

No, the solo material is a different entity.  Again, with how much material we have with Nile, that doesn’t get played in a normal set, to ask to play solo material would be wrong.

Do you have plans to tour solo?

Not at the moment but I never rule anything out.  For the last 18 years I have been a single parent.  My kid is now turning 18, which mean some of my hesitations for not touring a second band will be done.  I didn’t think it was fair to my kid to tour two different bands.  I am already not there half the year, so to take the other half of the year… you know, I have responsibilities as a parent.  But now that he is 18 that is less of an issue, so who knows.

Nile’s albums sound comparable to other top extreme metal bands, but you guys always sound even better live.  Do you feel that there is a limitation to the recorded medium?  Do you get frustrated by recording?  Is everything quite getting on there?

The challenge to recording this kind of music is the faster you go the harder it is to hear stuff. It is like an inverse proportion.   To get everything to be heard you have to make certain sacrifices.  To be a recording artist and play this kind of music has its frustrations.

Which bands and players originally wanted to make you learn guitar?

Well Sabbath, Toni Iommi, Eric Clapton in Cream, Billy Gibbons, ZZ TOP. I was already a player when I heard Ulrich Roth (Scorpions), but there was also Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple) amazing stuff, and Robin Trower (Procol Harum).

So pretty classic stuff?

Pretty classic.

Can you tell us about your somewhat unusual guitars?  I am talking about the scalloped frets (rather than being flat the fret board is concave between the frets).  I never heard of scalloped frets until I read about them in an interview you did.

There was something I heard in the work of Blackmore and particularly Ulrich Roth.  There was a certain tone that was just not duplicable on a normal fretted guitar because… on… oh I don’t have a guitar in here.

At this point Karl got up and yelled down the hall for someone to bring him his seven string guitar.  Someone brought him his guitar. He proceeded to demonstrate the capabilities of scalloped frets to me.  At this very moment, I realized that everything George Miller (the guy who runs Jump) says about journalism being the greatest job in the world is true.  One of my favorite musicians is about to give me a personal guitar demo! For the remainder of the interview he played guitar.

With a normal fretted guitar the string bends down and touches the wood of the fret board.  When your finger touches the wood that is when you stop.  You are banging on this absolute limitation.  With the scallop when your finger depresses the string is just floating in air.  The metal of the string is touching the metal of the fret but it is not limited by the finger board under it.

And you are able to bend a note just by applying more force?

Exactly, it makes bending multi-dimensional.  Not only can you bend up and down but you can also bend front to back.  It does make it more difficult to do certain things.  Just to play in tune is more difficult because you have to learn to relax enough to play in tune.

It is mind boggling that you are doing that while playing the complex music that you are.

It is a bit of a mind fuck.

So you are from South Carolina. I am huge barbeque fan.  Are you a big barbeque guy?

I like Maurice’s.  It is a little chain there are probably six or seven of them in our area.  They use a mustard sauce.

What do you do you do in your spare time?

Like I said, I do martial arts. Beating people up and getting beat up is my relaxation.

I have to ask because I asked Paul Allender are you into martial arts movies?

I am at times.  I recently saw a good one, The Raid: Redemption.

I saw that one it was really good.

Wasn’t it incredible?

Well whatever you do don’t watch Dredd that was like a more boring version without the great martial arts.

Yeah I saw that one but I fell asleep watching it.  The time differences between watching those two movies I was sitting there thinking this is really familiar.

How did you get into Egypt and Egyptology?

Well it has always been an interest of mine, and I thought well I am in a band called Nile what would I want from a band called Nile.  So one thing led to another and there was a lot of researching for lyrics and it kind of grew out of that.

Anything you want to say to your fans.

We are really, really thankful to be playing metal after 20 years as Nile.  Hopefully, this tour is giving something back to our fans.  Playing two sets a night is a grueling, exhausting experience but we are doing it because we want to play our songs for our fans.

Well thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.