Thanks for the complements but George is a better drummer than me now; he does the business every day of the week, whereas I just train to "peak" whenever I need to do a recording. I wasn't that impressed by him live back when he first joined Nile and his style isn't exactly my cup of tea but he's a real monster on the drums now.

In my opinion, the best drumming in Nile came on In Their Darkened Shrines and/or Black Seeds of Vengeance. Both Laureano and Roddy blow Kollias away imo.

In my opinion "Those Whom the Gods Detest" is the Death Metal album of 2009 (closely followed by Everything is Fire by Ulcerate). I've listened to a lot of Death Metal in 2009, but I can't compare anything similiar to Nile's last album.
I really love everything about this album: The sound, the presentation, the compositions. Especially George Kollias drumming sounds better than before.
Also, Dallas Toler-Wade has advanced very well. His shredding skills are insane and his songwriting is far better than on Ithyphallic. Okay, The Essential Salts is killer, but As He Creates So He Destroys is boring. In contrast, his compositions on the new album are awesome.