Like he said in the review, the earlier albums. But they're noisy badly produced and boring death metal albums so don't bother. I won't even recommend them to people who like death metal.

Natch. Some one-off ambient tracks like 'Libation unto the Shades...', but usually the slower parts are stuffed in the middle of wall to wall brutality.

Great review, btw!

Haha. I highly doubt it. There's nothing nearly folk or ambient in Nile's output, if at any it is ALL shrouded by the brutalness/intensity of the music. Nile are one of those death bands that go way too intense than the regular bunch. I haven't yet heard this, but frankly I don't really care much, 'cause my interest in the genre has almost waned. A few years back I was a devil horn-toting ignorant idiot who scribbled down names of the heaviest bands I've heard to boast about it during classroom breaks, I might as well have gone "Fuck yeah NILE! Karl motherfuckin' Sanders is GOD!" then. Right now I look upon those times as one of those courtship-dates gone wrong due to insufficient bedding skills. :P

There's a huge plethora of music out there other than death metal, IMO. I really don't know why I'm saying all this. :S

There's a huge plethora of music out there

True and it has always been so, and it's probably why we can't and don't cover death metal much. Tastes all over the place with roots in metal is the common thread between the guys that review music here.

Hey, if your bedding skills are being tested, I doubt it counts as a bad date. Unless your standards are really high.

Hey, that was exaggerated rhetoric, alright. Why the rage? :(

Ah Laddu, I was there too for a mercifully brief period @ the DM fanaticism. I kept wanting to hear bands that were heavier than the ones I already had and generally when I did end up hearing these bands my first feelings would be -- disappointment. It all came to a head when I heard Twisted Mass of Burnt Decay by Autopsy. I thought that was about the most awful derivative and boring song I'd EVER heard. It put me off death metal as a genre for nearly a decade - I'd only listen to albums I already had/liked like Death, The Fourth Crusade, some of the Obituary stuff and Napalm Death.
PS: Twisted mass of burnt decay! sounds like one of the lines on Lets Get Rocked by Def Leppard -- like fer instance:
"Twisted mass of burnt decay! Stop bugging me"

George Kollias shows how much of a pretentious asshole he can be when he wants to in this album. Simply boring, I dunno why. I used to be such a nile fanboy in the old days. The last track on Ithyphallic is pretty good though.

That last track is pretty crushing. But there's a general coldness in a lot of this album.

My death metal mileage mostly extends to Deicide, Cannibal Corpse and Obituary - but I do like to check in on the genre from time to time. On the whole though, I've gotten beyond the heaviness as arms-race thing too, although I can totally relate to it.