KARL SANDERS Talks About His Pre-NILE Band MORRIAH

Chief editor Vincent Eldefors of Sweden's Tartarean Desire webzine conducted an interview with NILE founder Karl Sanders on October 7, 2005 prior to the band's show in Linköping, Sweden. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Tartarean Desire: I noticed that you were accused of cancelling your show in Belgrade for no reason, what really happened there?

Karl Sanders: "We couldn't get across the border. I think that is a pretty good reason, if you can't get there then you can't play the fucking show. They said we had too much gear, it was worth too much money, so the promoter told us to lie. If we would lie we would get across the border but lying is bad. They already knew what we had. If we tried to tell the guy next to him that we had something different, you know, that's fucking stupid. The promoter that's been badmouthing us, saying that we cancelled for no reason, he's a fucking liar. He's a fucking cocksucker."

Tartarean Desire: NILE began in 1993 but in the late '80s you were in a band called MORRIAH together with Pete Hammoura and Chief Spires, could you tell me something about that? Was it your first real band? You even played a show with MORBID ANGEL once, I believe?

Karl Sanders: "You knew about that? Wow! That was about ten years, on and off. We played with MORBID ANGEL and QUEENSRŸCHE and DANZIG, METAL CHURCH...., some others. The music was very different [from NILE]. Sometimes it was SLAYER but it had really good guitar solos. The vocals were kind of QUEENSRŸCHE-ish so it was kind of a weird band, a little bit ahead of its time. NEVERMORE now was kind of what we sounded like back then."

Tartarean Desire: Why did you quit?

Karl Sanders: "It was really hard to get anywhere, no-one gave a fuck about what we were doing. I think there was a show we were going to play about two hours from home and the singer says: 'I don't want to do it, I'm really tired today.' We were fed up, we went there and played the show and Chief and I did the vocals. We were like: 'Wait a minute, why were we taking abuse from this motherfucker if we could do the vocals ourselves. Fuck this.' The we changed over and started becoming NILE. It took a little while to figure out what we were doing."

Tartarean Desire: Was Tony Laureano never interested in joining the band on a more permanent basis?

Karl Sanders: "I don't want to comment on Tony. Who knows what the fuck he is thinking?"

Tartarean Desire: You have stayed loyal to Relapse Records for a long time now, you must be very satisfied with their support? Are you still under contract?

Karl Sanders: "Well, we have a deal with Relapse. [chuckles] When you have signed a paper I don't know if you can call it being loyal to your label. Our contract is done."

Tartarean Desire: So you've been thinking about other options?

Karl Sanders: "Who knows? Who can tell? It's a big world."

Read the entire interview at www.tartareandesire.com.