Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks (2013)

NIN: Hesitation Marks (2013)

The return of NIN after a five year hiatus was something that I anticipated greatly, but when it came it came with disappointment. [1]

Reznor was (happily?) married, rich, and had been free of record label interference for a number of years prior to its release — allowing for, one supposes, a pleasing level of creative freedom — all of which meant he'd less to get upset or angry about.

A nice place to be, for sure, but it eliminated many of the things that had traditionally been a source of inspiration and/or a motivational factor in the artist's music.

Consequently, lyrically it skims still waters while trying to remain as close to the deeper NIN formula as possible.

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (2008)

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip (2008)

The Slip does what many of the post millennium NIN albums basically do: it mixes the angry and the serene, and after repeated listens it's the serene tracks that prove to have the most depth musically and emotionally.

It was reportedly created in just three weeks, being an experiment in 'working with a compressed timeline'. It adheres to a mostly paint-by-numbers formula, but at least none of those numbers are (Year) Zero.

The end result does sound kind of rushed, but the enthusiasm for both the music and the project is definitely evident in the compositions and there are some quality tracks to be found.

It was FREE from the official site, released under a creative commons license (although a physical release did follow). Curiously, it no longer seems to be on the official website, at time of writing, but is still available from the Internet Archive in both lossy and lossless formats.

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I – IV (2008)

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I – IV (2008)

The sixth NIN studio album is almost entirely instrumental. It's a work that needs abstract analogies to define it.

I'm respectfully not going to attempt to provide any such things because they'll likely be different for everyone who hears it. Whether intentional or not, the music is like a soundtrack to whatever fleeting thought a subject's mind conjures when it's given free rein to do so. As you listen to it play, you'll create the meaning yourself.

It's split into four parts with nine tracks apiece. There's a specific mood to each of the four parts but they're malleable and can be made to fit the listener's own ideals and anxieties.

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero (2007)

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero (2007)

Year Zero is dark, like peering through a smoky looking glass. It's also dense and overly-layered, but not always in a beneficial way.

Interestingly, it lacks the introspective musings that NIN usually offer up. Instead, it's a concept album… religious / political nonsense… America…year 2022, etc. Boring.

It's noisy and frustrating; you could argue that so was Broken (1992) and I'd 100% agree with you, but Broken was more focussed and knew when to stop. Whereas Year Zero feels like it goes on too long, dragging me down into a state of sensory ennui.

Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth (2005)

NIN: [WITH_TEETH] (2005)

NIN's fourth full-length studio album is the most accessible, radio-friendly work that Reznor had made to date. Lyrically it takes the familiar dip into waters of self-loathing existentialism, but parts of its production are bright and airy, with happy sounding drums and inoffensive instrument distortion.

After repeated spins a large part of it can get tiresome to listen to, but there are just enough moments of beauty and strength rising above the safety net to make a purchase worthwhile. The songs Every Day is Exactly the Same and Sunspots are especially notable. Overall, it's like a NIN starter kit for the kids.

Natural Born Killers: Soundtrack (1994)

Natural Born Killers:

A Soundtrack for an Oliver Stone Film (1994)

The majority of film soundtracks (as opposed to film score albums) are little more than a collection of new or existing songs from different artists bundled together onto one disc.

Natural Born Killers' soundtrack is essentially the same. The biggest difference is that there was some actual thought and care put into structuring them, with custom edits and audio clips from the film itself used to connect the tracks into a more story-style structure.

It was compiled by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who referred to it as a "collage of sound," which I guess is as good a description as any. It's the kind of thing that many of us used to do back when all we had was a double tape-deck, a VHS collection and plenty of patience.

Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile (1999)

NIN: The Fragile (1999)

Five long years after The Downward Spiral (1994), its successor appeared, a double album of two distinct halves.

Disc 01 (labelled as LEFT) feels like another concept album. It's moody and seems initially impenetrable, but rewards repeated listens; like a winter retreat it reveals hidden beauty to those that choose to explore (if you can accept the notion that personal demons are a kind of beauty).

It embraces the fuzzy guitar sound that people associate with NIN, but there's much more to it - it's layered throughout with hooks and a deep resonating bass that pumps like a meticulously slow, pained heartbeat.

Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral (1994)

NIN: The Downward Spiral (1994)

For me, The Downward Spiral is one of the greatest albums of the 90s. It's noisy but it's beautiful. It's textured, multifaceted and multilayered, so you may be hearing things on your fiftieth listen that you hadn't heard before.

It's a concept album in which each song is like a piece of jigsaw puzzle; some of the pieces are more revealing of the whole than others, but when the picture is complete it becomes a darkened mirror that both entices and frightens. It has insect noises. It has film samples. It's the perfect example of creativity born from negativity given form. The production sounds like it was recorded yesterday.

Nine Inch Nails: Broken / Fixed (1992)

NIN: Broken E.P. (1992)

Broken is an angry, audible 'F**k You!' to the stifling conventions and contrivances of the music business, conceived, written, performed and co-produced by Trent Reznor. It's the sound of Reznor the 'commodity' hating on the people that want him to be marketable and make them money.

Ironically, it went on to make a lot of money, but it also saw NIN turn from being syth-pop-friendly to kicking it with the Industrial big league.

It wasn't just a Pretty Hate Machine (1989) retread with distortion, it was a whole new NIN sound that two years later, once the anger had subsided, would further develop into something altogether more mature, resulting in one of the best albums the genre ever produced: The Downward Spiral.

To promote the release a short film was made (but not officially released). It complemented the music in an intentionally non-media-friendly way. See The 'Broken' Movie (1993) for details.

Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

NIN: Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

My introduction to NIN was a track that was featured on a UK magazine cover-mounted sampler CD. I can't recall from which magazine it came, I think it may have been a short-lived one, but I'm pretty sure the track was Last from the Broken E.P. (1992).

The same disc had a track by Therapy? from their Nurse (1992) album, and one from Pigface's Fook (1992). Seeing as how all three releases are from the same year, I think it might be safe to assume that it was '92 when I first heard NIN.

The sampler did its job. I wanted more. After buying Broken and its remix album, Fixed (both 1992), I eagerly sought out the début album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989). I acquired it on vinyl and was surprised to find that it was different from what I expected - it was more like Depeche Mode than the Industrial anger of Broken.

Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth Lyric Poster (2005)

NIN: With Teeth Lyric Poster (2005)

The Lyric Poster (as pictured right) was made available free from NIN.com as both a regular image file and as a higher quality PDF for printing. However, for whatever reason(s), it's no longer on the official site. So, for those folks that wanted it but missed out, take advantage of the MEGA link below. I embedded it in the post initially but it was too large and took forever to load.

*** With Teeth Lyric Poster ***

You can take the image from this page if it suits your needs, but it's a resized and scaled down jpeg. The link above will give you the superior quality PDF (size 20.1 mb). The link should remain active for as long as MEGA continue to host stuff for free. But if for some reason it's not working, tell me in comments and I'll re-upload it when I'm able.

Nine Inch Nails: The 'Broken' Movie (1993)

Broken (1993)

Dir. Various

NIN's Broken (1992) EP lasts approximately 32 minutes, but it's an emphatic explosion of point-blank hatred and frustration, musically exploring themes of creative and emotional bondage.

As such, it needed a suitably extreme series of images to complement it, but I don't think anyone was expecting what we actually got (or didn't get because it was never officially released, but it was 'leaked' and so bootlegs are available).

Intercut between each of the four official music videos is footage that resembles a snuff film, if such things exist. There's also some bizarre S+M nonsense that's more laughable than shocking.

The uncut video for the song 'Happiness in Slavery' features a naked and willing Bob Flanagan having his fun-bits abused in a visual style that's reminiscent of Japanese auteur Shin'ya Tsukamoto. The graphic nature of it alone will have a lot of people overreacting, but it's fairy cakes compared to what follows.

The video for 'Gave Up' is the most disturbing. It returns the visuals to the amateur home video snuff footage from earlier, but it doesn't hold back like it did before. Be warned, it's not for the squeamish, and if you're not prepared it might even put you off your dinner.

NIN | JA: Tour Sampler (2009)

NIN | JA: Tour Sampler (2009)

An E.P that was given out free via direct download to promote the Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction Tour.

It features two tracks from NIN that were originally laid down during the With Teeth (2005) recording sessions. They didn't make it onto the final product. Don't assume they didn't make the cut because they're crap. They're certainly not. They're actually a must have for fans (well, fans of that particular album at least).

Wiki claims the two Jane's Addiction tracks were newly recorded studio versions of songs that had previously only existed as live versions.