Karl Sanders’ "day job" might be playing insanely fast, rhythmically intricate guitar work in the Egyptian-themed metal band Nile, but he hasn’t let that suppress his other creative outlets. We originally saw that eclectic side of Sanders back in 2004, when his meticulously crafted solo album Saurian Meditation was released. That venture took the musical interludes heard in Nile to a whole different level, and Sanders had more in store for his 2nd solo album. On April 14, the ambient, internationally influenced Saurian Exorcisms hit the shelves, and you’ll find that this time around Sanders played virtually every instrument on the record – from the traditional acoustic guitar to the E-bow and baglama saz.
While the
Saurian projects are
Sanders’ labor of love (the stress-free kind of labor, by the way), the guitarist told Ultimate-Guitar writer
Amy Kelly that he is still actively working on
Nile’s next album, due to be released in the Fall. And thanks to the wonders of technology, the members of
Nile have been able to do much of their songwriting via MP3s and email before heading into the studio. During this UG exclusive interview,
Sanders discussed the upcoming
Nile record as well as the creative freedom he has experienced as a solo artist.
UG: Let’s talk about how Saurian Exorcisms originally developed. Was any of the new material left over from your sessions recording Saurian Meditation?
Karl: The Saurian projects, they’re what I do for fun and to relax. I can enjoy these things. Nile is like my day gig. I love death metal – don’t get me wrong – but I spent my entire adult life religiously devoted to all of the hard work and sacrifices that go into trying to make a metal band happen. I like to play other stuff, too, for fun and to relax and be sane. Really this is just a way to kind of share it with other people and share another side of what I do. This album is never going to make me rich or anything. It’s basically just for fun.
I’ve read that some of the inspiration for the Saurian projects came about while you were writing the musical interludes for Nile. Is that primarily true or had you conceived the idea long before that time?
I’d say it really started germinating around the time of the Black Seeds of Vengeance album. I had a couple of pieces. “Luring The Doom Serpent” and “Of The Sleep Of Ishtar” I had knocking around for awhile. I really wanted to use them, but it was still too relaxed for Nile and the whole death metal thing. You can drop the intensity for a little while and try to do a short interlude, but you really can’t expand on it and give it its full worth. It would be turning a death metal album into something else, something that would be maybe a bit confusing. Is this is a meditation album or is it headbanging music? I can’t tell!
When you brought the new ideas to the other members of Nile, were they fairly supportive of that creative direction?
They liked it, but they raised their eyebrows when I was playing it for them! They’d say, “Yeah, we like it, but…” So it’s really kind of like they gave me the idea that I could do this other thing and not try to do more than what Nile really should. Since that day of going, “Hey, this really is two different projects,” I’ve had a lot more peace in my creative soul.
In comparing the liner notes for Saurian Meditation and Saurian Exorcisms, I noticed that you’ve taken on quite a bit more responsibility musically speaking. You now play everything from the guitar to drums to keyboards, not to mention all of the other exotic instruments. Besides Mike Breazeale participating in the vocals, is it accurate to say that you played everything else?
Uh, yeah. I almost feel uncomfortable saying, “Yeah, I did all of that!” I was like inches from just making up total lies, giving credit to people who didn’t even play on the record. I don’t want to take all the credit! Then my manager said, “What the fuck is your problem? What’s wrong with you? Being humble, that’s a silly flag to fly. Just tell people what you did and take the blame for it, good or bad. Just be real about it.” So it was like, “Yeah, this is how we’re going to approach it.”
It’s definitely impressive that you have expanded your sights to instruments like the baglama saz. How early on in your career did you dedicate yourself to learning that new world of instrumentation?
I think I bought the baglama in like 2002 or so. I saw it hanging in a shop in Seattle. They’ve got all kinds of exotic instruments, and I just became enamored with it. It was just too cool and I had to have it. I played it at home and really had a lot of fun with it. I was like, “Fuck. I can’t play this like the Turkish masters, but I can make some interesting music with it. I can play it in that relaxing, melodic kind of way.” To me, it’s really fun because it’s completely opposite from all of the guitar shredding that I do in Nile.
This is a quiet, relaxing approach to making music. It kind of works for me. It’s not as demanding. There is no virtuoso performance stuff, other than some acoustic shredding stuff. In the Saurian Meditation and Saurian Exorcisms projects, it’s more about making some interesting, meditative stuff. So that kind of allows me to play the different instruments because I don’t necessarily have to be a virtuoso on them. I just like finding the right parts to play. You play the right parts with a little bit of taste and it doesn’t matter if you’re a super virtuoso or not. You’re making music.
“Acoustic shredding” is a perfect way to describe your work on Saurian Exorcisms. There are quite a few parts that, if amplified, could transfer over seamlessly to a Nile album. Do you ever write some of your Nile parts initially on the acoustic?
Actually it’s the oldest writing process. Some of the earliest Nile songs were me sitting on the floor here in South Carolina at night. When it’s hot, you get the guitar because you can’t sleep. I was just playing these dark, evil kind of riffs, but you make them come out of the acoustic guitar. When you don’t have the big Marshall stack, you have to rely more on the actual content of the notes you’re playing rather than the brute force of it. It kind of forces you to come up with more genuinely interesting pieces, as opposed to sheer bludgeoning power.
What kind of acoustics are you using on Saurian Exorcisms?
I’ve got a few things here that I’m using. There is nothing super-grand like a Breedlove or a Taylor. I can’t quite afford instruments like that. I play the Deans. I’ve got some Dean classicals that I play. I’ve got a very, very old Sigma Martin that I’ve had since 1980 or so. Maybe 1981, I think. It’s been really beat up. It’s got this really nice, mellow tone. Then I’ve got this Godin. It’s called the Multiac ACS Slim. It’s a really nice, solid-body, nylon string. You can also do MIDI straight out of it as well. It really lends itself to high-speed, nylon kinds of things. It’s a lot of fun. There is the Godin Glissentar. It’s a way-cool instrument. It’s a fretless 11-string.
How easy it to tackle a fretless 11-string?
The Glissentar is an attempt to take a lute format. It’s like a Middle-Eastern, fretless lute kind of thing. You put it in a format where guitar players can easily access it. It’s laid out like a guitar. There are little markers where the frets ought to be. You know where you’re supposed to stick your fingers! The tone it gets is paired up exactly the same way a lute is. It’s wonderful for doing Middle-Eastern kind of stuff, but it’s for a guitar player to be able to access. It’s a cool instrument.
There has been talk that another Nile album could possibly be released this year. Have you worked on any new material yet as a band?
Actually we’re in the thick of the writing process. We make home demos at our little home studios here. It’s just guitar and click, and then we send those over to George, our drummer. He lives in Athens, Greece. We kind of write songs via email! It’s kind of a crazy process. He’s got his own little home studio where he’s got his drums set up. He takes whatever we send him, records drums to it, and then sends it back. We kind of all get together on Skype and go, “Hey, you’ve got to put the fill there, do the double bass there.” That kind of stuff. It’s a whole lot of fun. By the time that George does fly over to start live rehearsals, we will already have done the bulk of the work.
You and Dallas create some highly complex guitar parts. It seems that it would take a huge amount of dedication to get all of the parts down rhythmically. Are you at a point now where you’ve been working together so long that it’s second nature?
Dallas and I have been playing together since 1997, maybe ’98. From the day he walked in and auditioned, that guy was locked dead-on to what I was doing. It was uncanny. It was one of those magical rehearsals. He walked in, and he had learned two songs. One of them he had learned in the wrong key. So right there on the spot, he instantly transfers all of the guitar parts that he had learned and pulled off the audition flawlessly. “Smashing The Antiu” has got all of these intricate 16th note guitar runs that are done in unison – and he nails them! We were just like, “Fuck all of these other motherfuckers! The job is yours if you want it!” It turns out that we’re both Geminis and we were born a day apart. So we’ve got a natural synergy, I guess, for playing together. For us, it just works.
"Is this is a meditation album or is it headbanging music? I can’t tell!"
I love the Dean guitars. As a company they’ve been so good to us over the years. I really feel a sense of loyalty to those guys. Fuck, yeah. They’re great guitars. I bought my first one at Thoroughbred Music in Tampa, Florida. I had used it for a solo on the Black Seeds of Vengeance album. After that it was just like, “Man, I’ve got to get some more of these guitars.” They’re amazing guitars. They were nice enough to give us an endorsement before anybody had really ever heard of us. That was way cool. That’s when you need a guitar, when you can’t afford one. You’re out on tour and you’re beating up the very few guitars that you have. The fact that they stepped up to the plate for us and helped us out with quality guitars when we really needed them, that was just so cool of them. They didn’t have to do it.
Do you think that Deans meet the needs of beginning players who are trying to obtain the level of speed and agility found in so many proficient metal players?
I’d say, yes. The Deans have a playability about them and a solid, professional feel. You feel you can do the difficult things and you can execute them. If you have that confidence, then you’re more willing to put that extra level of dedication in. That goal seems achievable. Yeah.
Perhaps your most well-know guitar is the KxK Warrior V, which simply put, is a badass-looking guitar. Did you design that yourself?
I was actually at NAMM a few years back and I met Rob (Kaufman), and he had some really cool lead guitars. He said, “If you don’t necessarily like what I’ve got here, I’d be willing to do anything you wanted.” I was like, “Oh, yeah?” That’s a tall order because if you ask me what kind of guitar I want, I’m going to want super-long scale length and insanely deep scalloped frets. I’m going to want a headstock that looks like a weapon. I want a 13-inch bayonet on the end of my guitar! He looked at me like I was just insane, but he was willing to do it.
How long did the process take to create the entire guitar?
It was back and forth for a couple months with different sketches. He would cut a few pieces out, and then try and see what would work and how he was going to make a 13-inch headstock. He got it together and surprisingly that guitar sounds amazing. Between the 27-inch scale length and the extra wood on the headstock, it’s just that much more tone. It’s the guitar you hear playing all of the rhythms on Annihilation of the Wicked.
Would you say that both the Dean ML and the Warrior are used equally in the studio and on the road?
The ML seems to be mostly a touring guitar. It’s super durable, super tough. It’s like indestructible. It’s flown all over the world, and it’s always ready to go. I pull it out of the case when I arrive wherever the fuck I am, and it’s there and it’s ready. It hasn’t done anything crazy. It’s still this dependable guitar that I can count on it to be. In the studio, just to keep your ears fresh and to keep yourself inspired, I think it helps to not play the same guitar all the fucking time.
What kind of guitars would we find in your studio setup?
I’ve got my Fenders and my Jackons and my Deans. I’ve got three KxKs now. All three of those KxKs sound amazing! The double neck – oh, my God! It’s funny because, as a double neck, it’s not an easy guitar to play. It’s actually kind of awkward. But the tone of that guitar is such that I was like, “You know what? I’m going to play this thing in the studio. Difficulty be damned!” It’s incredible.
Obviously you had a solid idea of what you wanted the façade of your KxK to look like, but were you just as focused on what you were needing in the fretboard, the pickup, and other specs?
Absolutely. I’ve been using the Seymour Duncan Invaders for like 25 years or so at least. I don’t think I could go to another pickup for my main stuff. For leads I use a couple other Seymour Duncan models, just so that the lead guitar doesn’t have the exact same tone that the rhythm guitar does. That way I can hear the lead. It’s so easy for stuff to mush out tone-wise when you’re going at like 250 beats per minute. But yeah, the guitars that I asked Rob to build, they’ve all got to have maple necks. That’s really important to me, even though he’s got like an ebony fretboard on top of it. Rob uses a lot of cocobolo wood. Still, I like the feel and the sound of maple because it’s sharps and articulate. It really cuts through. Playing down-tuned death metal, I was struggling to get everything heard guitar-wise.
In terms of working in the studio, was Saurian Exorcisms a far cry from your experiences with all of the Nile albums?
Absolutely. Saurian Meditation, first and foremost, it’s something that I love doing. And it’s fun! When Mike and I get together, we’re having fun making music. It’s like a joy. It’s not a job. Nile is a job. There are different stresses and pressures and deadlines. The band dynamics put pressure on the creative process. Saurian Meditation is a relaxing kind of thing. I can do whatever I want. If I don’t like something, I can play it 500 times until I do like it. I don’t have to argue with anybody with this project. You don’t have people showing up late for practice. You don’t have to try and explain some weird rhythmic content to the drummer or yell at the bass player because he’s out of tune or any of that crazy stuff!
While listening to Saurian Exorcisms, it became apparent to me that there was a cinematic feel to it all. Would you ever considering working as a film composer someday?
Absolutely. I’ve asked myself, “What am I going to do when I can’t play death metal anymore?” There is some stopping point. There has to be. I mean, you can’t play death metal when you’re 60 or 70. At some point you’ve got to stop and do something else. Absolutely, doing soundtracks would be such a blast! The possibilities are just mind-boggling.
During your 2008 tour you were offering guitar lessons at the show venues, which was a very cool idea. Would you consider being an instructor again?
Actually I think it would be a lot of fun to do it again. When I did the guitar lessons on that last American tour, I met so many awesome guitar players. It was a blast. I might be the one giving lessons and talking a billion miles an hour or whatever, but the whole process and hearing new players was refreshing and was educative to me as well. I think when you’re explaining something to the student, you have to find a way to explain it to them that sometimes can teach you more about what you’re talking about. It’s some weird paradox! I find the same thing in my Tae Kwon Do class. Whenever I have to help another student with some aspect of Taw Kwon Do, I find that I understand it from a little different perspective now. It’s the same thing teaching guitar. You learn so much from the students.
Do you have a tentative release date lined up for the new Nile record?
We’re looking at Fall. We’re looking at studio time for June. So we’d record in June and July, and then it would come out sometime in the Fall. We’re also putting together a European tour for the first part of Fall.
Will a U.S. tour come soon afterward?
We haven’t figured out when we’re going to do the U.S. yet, but we’re thinking January. You can’t not tour in America! We’ll play America, but we just haven’t gotten that far down the road.
Interview by Amy Kelly
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