Shuroki Online

I have been steadily steeping in the newest Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth – come and read my rambling below!

I was going to sit down and write a quick review of the new Dr. Who series on BBC in the UK. I say “was” because as I fired up the new Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth as some mood music, I decided I was more in the mood to write about it.

Quite simply, this album rocks.. and I don”t mean strictly in the “is cool”, or “is heavy” meaning of “rocks”, but literally. Trent Reznor, like most musicians, has been steadily progressing the core sound and feeling of his music. Unlike most musicians, this progression has been subtle, and sublimely good.

Ever since the earliest Right Track demos that bred Pretty Hate Machine, NIN has been very heavy and very techno bringing the “Techno-Industrial” music genre to the mainstream more than any other artist. Unless you count the airplay of Marilyn Manson, which is largely a production of Trent more than probably Marilyn, so should be credited to Trent for it”s success.

The Downward Spiral brought a much more “live” feel to the recorded songs and I believe Trent attributed that in interviews to touring. He was really feeling the power of a band dynamic and started pulling away from the almost wholly synth-dependent single production style to a more collaborative and acoustic style. No, not the MTV Unplugged acoustic of yesteryear, but the utilization of real drums instead of machines, and inclusion of more guitars.

The electronic elements were still all there, as they are with The Fragile and With Teeth, they just aren”t as prevalent. Which (I think at least) is a very good thing. We”re getting the best of all worlds with each release and this latest effort is no exception.

I”m on my third listen of the new album. I had run my iPod batteries dry repeating the leading single The Hand That Feeds over and over the past couple months. I think that was the first actual song I had played on my iPod since I started listening to Podcasts. I almost bought a Mac when Trent released the song for free in a multi-track GarageBand format. He did this so that people could download, remix, re-record or do whatever the heck they wanted with the tracks.

He actually open sourced the single!! That”s incredible for an artist at his level, and just goes to show how fucking cool Trent is. It would have been cooler and very punk rock if he had released it in Audacity, or another open-source multi-track program, but I can see a few benefits for going with GarageBand.

Anyway, I downloaded the full album from iTunes and started my first listen. Damn – look at that – I have referenced iPod, Macintosh, GarageBand, and iTunes in one music review. This is kinda scary. Note to self: buy some Apple stock.. or start using alternative services or products before Apple becomes as evil as Microsoft.

Rest assured, the steady decline of Apple into evilness will come in a later article ) In fairness to myself, I was going to download the album with SharpMusique rather than use Apple”s proprietary interface (and it”s DRM), but SharpMusique doesn”t facilitate purchasing a full album with the discount. You see, normal iTunes purchases are $.99 cents a song, but if you buy a full album it”s only $10.00, no matter how many tracks are on it (thirteen in the case of With Teeth) although I had bought The Hand That Feeds as a single, so I ended up buying it twice.

Ok, so I downloaded the full album and gave the first listen. I tend to approach a new album kinda like porn. I tend to rapidly power through the entire thing once, making mental notes on the parts that I want to come back and “focus” on. Only on this album, as with The Fragile, I found it difficult to tag specific favorite songs because they are all just so damn good.

From the techno leaning, classical Trent (with signature falsetto) of the opening track All the Love In The World, to the hardcore You Know What You Are and Getting Smaller, to the disco beat of Only, the PJ Harvey-esque With Teeth or the just plain rocking of The Collector, The Hand That Feeds and others – this is a great ride.

If you”ve liked the direction Nine Inch Nails has gone from The Downward Spiral to The Fragile then you will absolutely love this album. With Teeth is another stop in the evolution of Trent Reznor”s musical expression and I”m basking in every note.

I thought he might be out of brooding, self loathing angst but luckily that well still hasn”t run dry. It will be interesting to see what”s in store at the bottom of the spiral.