But all this juvenilia is balanced by death metal at its most technically vigorous. Majestic and malevolent, "Unas Slayer of the Gods," Darkened's eleven-and-a-half-minute centerpiece, is almost operatic in its stateliness, as layers of Mach-III guitars, algebraic drumming and sandblasted vocals morph into an ominous death march, complete with a spoken-word monologue that sounds like Vincent Price dislodging a chicken bone from his windpipe. What further distances this band from most of its counterparts is the fact that much of this disc is more funereal than frenzied, with haunting incantations such as "I Whisper in the Ear of the Dead" and the regal "Hall of Saurian Entombment," which add Gregorian chants, chimes and Old World percussion to Nile's lethal charge. It all makes Darkened a disc that will be hard to top as 2002's finest metal offering.