Pretty Hate Machine
Rating: 4 Stars (Silver) * * * *
Broken
Rating: 4 Stars (Silver) * * * *
The Downward Spiral
Rating: 6 Stars (Diamond) * * * * * *
The Fragile
Rating: 5 Stars (Gold) * * * * *
With Teeth
Rating: 4 Stars (Silver) * * * *
Year Zero
Rating: 5 Stars (Gold) * * * * *
Ghosts I-IV
Rating: 3 Stars (Blue) * * *
The Slip
Rating: 4 Stars (Silver) * * * *
Nine Inch Nails is one of my favorite music artists, if not my favorite. No other artist is as consistent in delivering quality material for years. On top of that, NIN albums are fulfilling to buy because of their beautiful packaging and artwork. In order to review the newest album, which I'll do in the next post, I'm first going to review the catalog up to this point.
The debut album is Pretty Hate Machine, showing the early roots of NIN. The sound of the album is early industrial and synthpop. The songs Head Like a Hole, Down In It, Sin, and Ringfinger are my favorites on this album. It is catchy, but is slightly inhibited by the self loathing lyrics at points, like on the song That's What I Get. Still a great album.
The next is the Broken EP, a short but intense album. This is the start of the sound that NIN is most known for, an intense burst of industrial rock anger. The song Wish won Trent Reznor a grammy, though for me the best songs are Last, Happiness in Slavery, and Gave Up. There also exist two cover songs as bonus tracks, both of which are great stuff. This EP's orange and black inner artwork is some of the neatest I've seen.
Next is NIN's most successful and one of my favorite albums of all time, The Downward Spiral. The album is a dark masterpiece, with each song sounding profound and being organized in the perfect way to give the album flow. The lyrics tell a story of a protagonist descending his own personal downward spiral, starting with Mr Self Destruct and ending with Hurt at the bottom of the spiral. This album also spawned Closer, the most successful single of NIN's.
After a long period which were Trent Reznors darkest days, eventually The Fragile appeared, an atmospheric double album that was met with some controversy because of it's initial inaccessibility to the listener. The album is still somewhat infamous for dropping from no 1 on the billboards in the first week. However, the album sold well over time and was met with good reviews, and remains a favorite among dedicated NIN fans, including myself. Somewhat Damaged, The Wretched, We're In This Together, Even Deeper, La Mer, Into The Void, Where is Everybody?, StarFuckers Inc, and The Big Come Down are my favorite songs on the album. It would be wonderful if double album epics like this and Pink Floyd's The Wall were more common, though sadly they are difficult to make and aren't the most marketable form of album.
After yet another long period in which Reznor became sober and reinvented himself and NIN, With Teeth showed up, with the intial title of Bleedthrough. With Teeth is the era I was most familiar with of NIN when I first discovered them (or rather him). The album has a stripped down raw sound compared to NIN's earlier albums, being less focused on being a sprawling epic like The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, and more on being a collection of songs that happen to fit together. Some might say this is NIN's safest and most marketable album. The first half could probably be described that way, though the tail end starting with The Line Begins to Blur becomes very experimental and much more daring. While still having a dark tone, the album is a nice tribute to Reznor's rise from the ashes that he faced.
Soon after, an alternate reality game with the theme "art is resistance" showed up everywhere, foreshadowing the release of Year Zero. Much more daring and dense than With Teeth, this album takes on a heavily political tone, Reznor focusing not so much on his own journey this time, but on what he believes is right. He does this tactfully and creatively, with the lyrics painting a picture of a dystopian future of the United States following what Reznor saw as the unfortunate path it was heading down. The album is very dancible as well as challenging but rewarding after several listens. The Good Soldier, Vessel, Me I'm Not, Capital G, The Warning, God Given, Meet Your Master, In This Twilight, and Zero-Sum are my favorites. I would put this in NIN's top 3 easily.
After this, Trent Reznor departed from Interscope Records and spent some time as an independent musician and working on several different projects. The first was Ghosts I-IV, a completely instrumental double album (or rather a quadruple EP depending on how you look at it). Overall I would say this is the weakest album by NIN, but only because it is missing lyrics and isn't quite as great of an experience as works that have Reznor's voice. However, the instrumentals are great stuff, ranging from quiet introspective pieces, to high energy jams. The thing I adore about this album is the packaging. Each song has an associated piece of artwork. On top of that, the physical release came in the form of several tiers, the Standard, Deluxe, and Ultra Deluxe Editions; with the Ultra Deluxe being perhaps one of the prettiest packages to hold an album. Plus it was signed by Reznor himself, which is pretty sweet. Sadly I did not get a hold of one of these things.
Finally, the last album in this review is The Slip, the final album that NIN put out while working independently of a record label. The album's first half is hard hitting while the second half is instrumental and atmospheric, aside from the final song. The album was completely free upon release, making it hard to call this a waste even if it were a bad album. However it is nice, with my favorites being Discipline, Echoplex, Head Down, and Demon Seed.
Next up is the review of the newest album just released, Hesitation Marks!
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