Nine Inch Nails releases

did you just reiterate the ** joke

New EP is very good. Varied. Some real noisy punky shit, some moody instrumentals, including another track with horns called "Play the Goddamned Part." I'm amusing myself imagining that the title was just Trent's grumpy advice to the musicians in the studio.

Tragic I couldn't get tix to their London shows this weekend. Just tragic.

this is prob the best thing they've put out since year zero imo

Quite enjoying this

it's very good, super cohesive and beautifully paced

All 3 EPs would fit comfortably onto a single CD. I'm just saying.

Have you ever had an acquaintance you knew back in school, a decent bloke but ultimately not someone you wanted to hang with? Then you ran into them years later and found they had done cool things with their life. That's this new EP to me. I haven't even heard NiN since "The Downward Spiral" and, while I always thought they were ok, I was never into their work.

I'm with Brad - "Bad Witch" is easily the most interesting thing Trent has ever done. Definitely inspired by Bowie's "Blackstar" - which is great in my book.

If Trent keeps going in this direction, he'll wind up like Scott Walker. Bring it on.

It's my favourite release by them since Downward Spiral and I've heard everything in between, for whatever that's worth.

Good new interview here:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trent-reznor-nine-inch-nails-atticus-ross-bad-witch-vegas-698419/

Finally did catch up with all the recent EPs the other week. Bad Witch really is quite remarkable.

can I just say I've always dug the way this dude's done that funk hiccupping vocal style on tracks that absolutely do not call for it

Mmmmm...can't STOP! ahhh...me, UH, I'm not

http://thequietus.com/articles/25050-nine-inch-nails-trent-reznor-interview-bad-witch

Doran - that was a great interview. My favorite line is when he said "the Spotify front end feels “more like a shopping mall record shop than a Rough Trade or an Amoeba. It’s not a place where people who love music are encouraging the deep dive into origins and history”."

In another interview, he had this gem which sums of my feelings exactly:
Rolling Stone: I did an interview once with a famous rapper before his record came out, and I asked him what he wanted it to be. He kept saying, “I want it to be what the fans want.”

TR: There’s probably nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want to do. But to me it feels like the difference between an entertainer and an artist, and I really quantify those things in my head. There are pop stars I don’t feel angry about. I don’t like what they do, but I feel like they’re an entertainer. But don’t confuse that with – and I’m saying this to sound pretentious – the artist that is actually trying to make art that may or may not intersect with commerce. Having a roster of songs that songwriters have written for you and showing up for a vocal session a couple of times and a photo session for your album that someone else designed. That, to me, feels like an entertainer.

this whole EP trilogy has been his best work in a long long time, since at least Year Zero as Brad said or maybe even The Fragile

great interviews too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnvf861FG8U

they finally did The Perfect Drug live!

!!!

Ending sequence down to a tee. (shame abt the 'without you' screaming audience member)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQBmALfSFEU

I'm really digging this not just because it's great, or because I like both NIN and Watchmen, but also because I feel it strongly shares some vibes with PWEI's Defcon one.

Ok, that's aces. Bring on the triple LP soundtrack!

I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to "The Downward Spiral," but putting it on yesterday I was reminded of just how aggressive and abrasive and weird (and ott/stupid, but so what) much of it is. I seem to recall thinking that at the time, too, even though my listening habits had more than prepared me for music like that. But listening in 2019, I was trying to put myself in the shoes (ears?) of someone who came to it in the wake of the alt-rock revolution. Nirvana is one thing, but that's easy listening compared to some of this (expertly engineered) in-the-red digital noise. Even some metal fans I imagine might have been take aback, right? This album is just much more confrontational than any other mainstream music of its period, imo.

It really started with Broken/Fixed for me, PHM was a lot of fun, almost disco in places then hearing Broken made me realise how far past the PHM sound he had pushed things.

Oh, for sure. I bought Broken the day it came out, with the little bonus 3" CD. It's super aggressive as well, but I don't know how many people actually bought/heard that before "Downward Spiral" was released.

I kind of knew something was up, I caught them in a little club in Glasgow on the latter stages of the PHM tour and it was super aggro, I don't think they played anything from Broken but they were telegraphing the songs in such a way that when Broken came out it made a lot of sense.

My bad, they played Wish, Physical and Suck

I was at a bar and someone played "Reptile" on the internet jukebox thing and I was just floored by it. never heard it through big powerful speakers like that. in fact I'm pretty sure I only heard TDS through headphones

Even some metal fans I imagine might have been take aback, right?

As a very young metal fan I certainly found it very challenging, but also fascinating, on my first few listens... Then I thought it was indisputably the greatest piece of music ever made for a good three years.

Nowadays the often daft and occasionally misogynist lyrics impinge on my enjoyment.

This album is just much more confrontational than any other mainstream music of its period, imo.

It's also less mainstream than grunge or alternative rock or whatever else we're calling "mainstream music of its period". "Closer" was the only thing that got play on MTV & radio, and there wasn't a bunch of similar or copycat artists getting popular in NIN's wake.
FWIW I wasn't at all taken aback by TDS nor found it challenging, as I'd already heard Ministry and Thrill Kill Kult and other industrial shit I've forgotten about.

I don't like Broken! I mean, I like it fine but it kind of "went too far" into messworld and Spiral reined it back amazingly, it feels so much more focused and controlled in its production

Fixed was good, it sounded like music they’d play at a super gothy nightclub where vampires would lure in hapless normies.

Wish, Last and Happiness in Slavery are all pretty banging.

I like Broken, he was really mad at his label.

xpost The album has sold almost 4 million copies, that's pretty popular even if "Closer" was the only "hit." Also, this is far more abrasive and confrontational than Ministry. I was a big fan of Milk and Honey and Mind, and while yeah, they set the template (among other aggro neo industrial acts, if not Big Black), this album pushes the sonics much further. And come on, there were plenty of imitators!

The production is amazing on TDS and I wish subsequent NIN releases were as abrasive, although I like a fair amount of the post-TDS stuff I don't they were ever as good again

I listen to The Fragile more than anything else by them tbh.

Also, this is far more abrasive and confrontational than Ministry.

I beg to differ. Once Ministry went full on industrial (post Twitch), there's nothing they did that was as MTV/radio-friendly as "Closer".
I can't think of any other industrial artists who went mainstream after "Closer" but could be forgetting. Filter? They toned down the industrial aspects for their 1 hit single. Who else was there?

Once Ministry went full on industrial (post Twitch), there's nothing they did that was as MTV/radio-friendly as "Closer".

Agree with this. Ministry's evolution was pretty fascinating: guitar-driven "industrial" halfway between Big Black and Slayer thrash (Land of Rape and Honey), a hodgepodge of sample-collage metal and postpunk dub-noise (The Mind...), full-on metal with samples (Psalm 69), grinding post-Unsane/Helmet noise rock (Filth Pig)... I never listened to Filth Pig until a year or so ago and it's surprisingly good, but there's no way I'd have predicted it as the next step after Psalm 69.

NIN, meanwhile, were occasionally noisy but always tended more toward minor-key melody; Reznor's a morose piano balladeer at heart, he just gets shouty sometimes.

NIN just released a "definitive" vinyl edition of With Teeth, btw. I can't really tell the difference (it was never one of my favorite NIN albums - it sounded like he'd been listening to a lot of DFA stuff), except there's one additional track that was apparently a B-side to one of the singles.

Comparing NiN to Ministry - in terms of who was more abrasive - is moot; or at least, I don't think that was what Josh' revive was about. NiN found their way into the mainstream (a miracle in itself) - surfing on the Grunge and post-industrial waves; became MTV stars, sold millions of records and got played on the radio world wide with a sound so abrasive and aggressive there was hardly a precedent.

I still think TDS is very powerful; it has lost some of it's impact, of course, but not nearly as much as a twenty years older me would expect it to have lost. And this is foolishly preaching from my generation to ThE kIdS of today, but I'd wager this record would, and does, still make an impact on young ears today.

Yeah, I didn't want to get into a comparison between the bands. I just meant that imo even if (like me) you were familiar with Ministry and Wax Trax and Pretty Hate Machine and lots of stuff short of maybe Einstürzende Neubauten, TDS is one super-abrasive, confrontational album, seemingly (at least on paper) one of the least commercial albums made. Even "Closer" is, for obvious reasons, super not commercial! The fact that the album (and songs) were hits and made superstars of NIN is really something. Usually the big major label commercial breakthrough goes the other direction.

Bands I'd say were influenced by NIN included Filter, Stabbing Westward, Marilyn Manson (obv) ... but more overtly I think a lot of bands were clearly *influenced* by NIN even if they didn't sound like them, and that included such veterans and Reznor influences themselves as Bowie and Depeche Mode.

His recent instrumental release of The Fragile is pretty incredible. Also the remastered versions of TDS and The Fragile are pretty top notch, as is the aforementioned Deviations 1.

Very sad at the loss of production depth to NIN tracks after The Fragile. Those two 90's albums had just next level layering and atmosphere he'd never quite touch again. Must've been the drugs?

drugs and/,budget.

I had no idea there was an instrumental version of the fragile available!

Bands I'd say were influenced by NIN included Filter, Stabbing Westward, Marilyn Manson (obv) ... but more overtly I think a lot of bands were clearly *influenced* by NIN even if they didn't sound like them, and that included such veterans and Reznor influences themselves as Bowie and Depeche Mode.

Agree with this 100%, and I feel like a lot of artists (especially Bowie) were standing there thinking, "Holy shit, you can get away with sounding like *that* and still have hit songs?"

Just looked to confirm, but after The Fragile Trent Reznor starts to producing everything himself. Well, him, with Atticus Ross and Alan Mulder. It becomes much more in house.

xpost and of course the 1995 tour etc. And it's pretty clear that "Rush" by Depeche on SOFAD was their response song as such to NIN.

Thanks to this revive I listened to NIN for the first time in 20+ years. God I love Broken.

I've been getting into My Chemical Romance for the past month or so and have had NIN on the brain because Planetary (Go!) sounds like a sped-up version of the chord progression from Something I Can Never Have.

I had a housemate that had some connections to MTV in London at the time and I recall her coming home one day with some promo VHS with the uncut (lol) version of the Happiness in Slavery video, it was such a big deal but ugh...

i listened to with teeth today. wildly underrated imo

the dfa flirtations are limited to when “all the love in the world” transforms into a stomping house track (which is maybe the most amazing thing that happens in any nin song) and “only”’s groove, which is a cowbell away from the juan maclean. the rest of the record feels like the most band-focused nin record (outside of the slip which i haven’t heard since it came out so i might be remembering it wrong). grohl’s drumming sounds amazing throughout

Does he play on the whole thing?

Regardless, I don't remember when, but I recall Reznor going to Albini just to track big drums. That's ultimately probably the best use of Albini's time.

Does he play on the whole thing?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 26, 2019 6:03 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

little less than half of it