Nile

When Napoleon’s army discovered the Rosetta stone along the banks of the Nile in 1799, little did it know that the tablet of black basalt would provide the first key to unlocking the thorny riddles of Egyptian hieroglyphics. “Perhaps someday,” the soldiers might have said, “this slab of carved symbols will lead to a group of ragtag, heavy-metal kids in Greenville, South Carolina, to create a death-metal band that celebrates the ancient race of people we have just uncovered.” And such a band did come to pass, having the given appellation Nile, so named for the brackish river that moves through Egypt like a serpent. And it was good. Nile, a four-man operation that’s seemingly tired of death metal’s usual array of corpse wolves, grave robbers and syphilitic barbarians, wallows in the misery of Ramses’ wake (I, Ramses/Builder of temples, usurper of monuments/Slayer of Hittites/Bringer of war) or in pestilential curses (A cesspool breeding the unclean/Hordes of locusts/Fiends of the south winds/Cleanse the earth from the impure). The group throws in unique flourishes (Dobro, sitar, waterphone and Tibetan chants), and beneath its loud onslaughts exist ornate metal symphonies, interesting time-signature changes and, yes, even guitar solos.