Nile & Chthonic preview

Nile, Chthonic
Pearl Room, Mokena
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Here’s the thing about Ozzfest 2007: The lineup is lame. Maybe the festival lost what credibility it had left a few years ago when Sharon Ozzbourne publicly sabotaged legends Iron Maiden during their last night on the tour, or maybe they couldn’t get many “names” this year because of the whole “Freefest” thing where bands are basically paid by selling their merchandise. Either way, there are only a few interesting bands included, and two of them just happen to be playing a Chicagoland show before August 10th’s Ozzfest.

So if Nile and Chthonic (pronounced thonick) were your main reasons for trekking out to Tinley Park, consider this Pearl Room show your chance to trade the long lines, sun, overpriced food/drink, and crappy metalcore for free parking and air conditioning.

Nile have always called themselves an “ithyphallic” metal band, but it became literal when the group released Ithyphallic last month on Nuclear Blast. The album will surely raise some eyebrows because of its title – the word apparently refers to the ancient practice of sculpting statues of gods with crazy-big proportioned boners – but among death metal purists Ithyphallic will raise eyebrows because it’s the band’s most complete work thus far. Certainly as heavy as anything Nile have done previously, what makes this record stand out is the production, which brings to light all the parts and players (vocalist/guitarist Karl Sanders, vocalist/guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade, and drummer George Kollias), which hasn’t been the case on prior Nile albums. Plus, for all the bad press metal gets for its lyrical content, listening to Nile is like the ancient Egypt section of history class – Egypt isn’t a subject on Nile records, it’s the subject. (Though we don’t remember “Anoint my phallus/with the blood of the fallen” as one of the covered topics in our history book.)

Along with Nile and Behemoth, Taiwanese group Chthonic are one of the few Ozzfest bands truly capable of being called “extreme metal.” Though they’ve been around – and immensely popular – in East Asia for a decade now, they are just starting to scrape the surface here in the States thanks to the Ozzfest slot (Chthonic’s first full U.S. tour), the North American releases of 2002’s Relentless Recurrence (TRA Music) and last year’s live DVD/double album A Decade On The Throne, and the accolades dumped on their most recent studio album, Seediq Bale. A mix of symphonic and black metal, occasional clean female vocals, piano, and Oriental violins give them enough beauty to make you stop and notice, but frontman Freddy, Left Face Of Marodon’s charred screams and Jesse, The Infernal’s shred-happy riffs provide enough beast to allow Chthonic to hang on a bill headlined by an act like Nile.

— Trevor Fisher

Click here for streaming samples of Nile.

Click here for streaming samples of Chthonic.

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly