Awesome / Nile

• George Kollias. He does all of his blastbeats one footed. For the normal double bass stuff, he does it two footed like a regular human being. However, what's even crazier is that he only uses his ankles when drumming at this speed, when nearly 95% of all drummers would have to use their whole leg. To give you an idea of how insane that is, in the song "Kafir," there is a section at 280 BPM, during which he plays a section of solid 16th notes, again, using only his ankle for motion, obviously using both feet. To put this in laymen's terms, and to demonstrate how insanely difficult that is, try to sit down, and using only your ankle as the fulcrum of motion, attempt to tap your foot to the ground nine times in one second. Now try to perfectly synchronize your other foot one eighteenth of a second off. Then do it a little bit faster than that. We'll be waiting. He's not the only drummer who does this, nor was he the originator of one-foot blasts, but he has probably done more to popularize it than anyone else and is still one of the tightest purveyors of the technique.
  • Upon his initial induction into the band, Karl decided to test both his playing and songwriting abilities by sending him an incomplete demo of the song "Chapter of Obeisance Before Giving Breath To The Inert One In The Presence Of The Crescent-Shaped Horns", shoehorned with a click track in place of actual drum arrangements (the drums originally recorded for the demo were apparently extremely difficult to hear over the rest of the song). Karl notes that the particular style of syncopations used in the song make it extremely difficult to interpret when using a click track, and that it was George's task to decipher the exact progression of the song and then to compose drum parts that would both unify the various Jazz-fusion components and be meaningful in the midst of a death metal frenzy. When George arrived in America for his first session with the band, his contributions for "Chapter of Obeisance..." actually did a better job of unifying the various elements of the song than Karl had ever envisioned.
  • Unfortunately, the swivel-foot technique is a case of Awesome, but Impractical over the long term. Yes, it minimizes wasted energy and allows for far greater precision at high speeds than two-foot blasts would normally offer, as well as being far easier on Achilles tendons for heel-up players, but, as Zach Gibson and various other swivel-foot users can tell you, it is absolute hell on your knees, and even Kollias has been trying to adjust his technique to ease the strain on his body. Many drummers who use swivel-foot for kick rolls have started to switch to doubles out of necessity (namely Gabe Seeber); while doubles are harder to be precise with, they do not destroy your knees like swivel-foot does (Seeber, by his own admission, made the switch because his knees were giving out from his technique at just twenty-seven years old).
• The overall amount of Shown Their Work in Nile's music regarding mythology and history, plus Karl Sanders' statement that the best way to learn more about the subjects depicted in their songs is a visit to one's local library.