How 'The Nile Song' from 'More' Foreshadowed Pink Floyd's Heavy Turn on 'Animals'

Most people think Pink Floyd went heavy in the mid-’70s with Animals, but the blueprint was laid six years earlier on the soundtrack for More. “The Nile Song” is a violent, distorted blast of proto-metal—Gilour’s guitar is sludgy and overdriven, Waters and Mason lock into a churning, off-kilter groove, and the vocals are nearly screamed. It’s a total outlier on an otherwise pastoral album, and it sounds nothing like the spaced-out Syd Barrett era.

What makes it a clear precursor to Animals is the rhythmic aggression and the use of odd time signatures—the verse is in 6/8 but the chorus shifts into a stomping 4/4—plus the outright angry tone. Listen to “Sheep” or “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” and you’ll hear that same coiled, confrontational energy, just reined in by a few years of structural refinement. “The Nile Song” proves the band’s heavy side wasn’t a late discovery; it was lurking from the start.