Nile at the Culture Room this Sunday

Nile

As is so often the case with metal shows, there are too many bands on this bill. While there's a certain bang-for-the-buck factor, in all honesty – and with no offense to the other three bands – this show could easily be whittled down to Nile and Warbringer and it would be worth twice the price of admission. Were it to be just those two, it would be the equivalent of seeing a nascent Metallica opening for a height-of-their-powers Iron Maiden in 1983. Warbringer's aggressive, retro-minded thrash is all about classic-metal power, and Nile's expansive, imagery-heavy death metal is still managing to improve on the band's considerable past accomplishments. That's not to say that either of these bands sound like the aforementioned reference points, but they certainly evoke the same sort of emotions; Nile is all about rendering scribbled notes Bullfinch's Mythology into epic bludgeonings, while Warbringer is solely devoted to ensuring you have Headbanger's Neck the morning following the show. While neither of these bands is likely to fly their own tour jet or star in a therapy movie, they each stand as paragons for all that is right in metal today.

Nile plays the Culture Room on Sunday, March 9. Tickets are $20 the show starts at 7 p.m. For more info, check out the Culture Room website.
-- Jason Ferguson