Dearest Trent Reznor,
You don't know me, nor do you care who I am or what my thoughts of your art are. However, we need to sit down and have a serious chat. In 2008 when you announced you were putting Nine Inch Nails on hiatus, I was sad, but was also able to recognize that you were going out on a high note, not leaving a tarnished legacy.
Now, I'm sure we all saw this coming (ie, new NIN material), but imagine the shock I experienced when you announced Columbia would be releasing your new album! I thought labels were bad? Right? You said they were. So, because I'm an idiot I shelled out the cash to buy your new album, and it is probably the worst piece of garbage this side of a Chocolate Starfish and bottled Hotdog Water.
In short I want my money back, but what I really want is an angry, angsty Trent back. Look, I'm happy you got married, I'm happy you're sober, that's good, but that doesn't make good NIN music. Please, don't release anymore music until you get divorced and/or fall off the wagon.
With "all the love in the world,"
G
1 comment:
So, you hate the new album. Good for you, that's your right. But why do you hate it? What about it doesn't say NIN to you that the last batch of albums so readily did? You can;t say "it doesn't sound the same" because no NIN album has ever carried a distinct "style" that we may attribute to other forms of music (e.g. punk, or metal), but one thing it's always been is evolving. The music has grown along with the artist who is NIN.
I have been listening since The Downward Spiral. A buddy of mine had the cassette playing in his car. The first song I hear was Ruiner and I feel immediately in love. Went out and bought it along with Broken, Fixed, PHM and all the other Halos I could get my hands on. Can you imagine the shock when getting PHM after hearing TDS and Broken. My immediate response was "Who the Hell is this?!" Then I listened to it. I mean really listened to it, and didn't discount it because it didn't sound like the NIN I though I knew. Granted I did that one backwards, but I still had the same uphill I think people are facing now. That uphill isn't anything more than letting my preconceived notions go and listening to the music for what it is.
You what the biggest difference in this album is compared to all other Nails offerings? The chorus on the tracks. Take a second and listen. Rather than the typical "it's chorus time, let's insert the musical hook and step it up a notch" the actual take it back a step. Bring the vocals and the sound down a notch. It's almost an anti-chorus, and it works. It really does.
On to the label bit. One of which I consider to be less than an issue. Yep, he did come out of a record company angry and spiteful and seething. But, like many artists, he got snared in early in a shitty deal. Go back to the PHM era, to the TVT label, he's still dealing with the fallout from way back then. When he remastered PHM in 2010 he had to go through a bunch of hoops to remaster his own music that was held in limbo by a company that doesn't even exist any longer. So let's step forward to 2013. He's been in the crap end of the label pool, he's waded out and self-released a number of things quite successfully and now he's back on a label, where he can have a larger pool of resources to get the job done and he can concentrate on the music and not the marketing. And I bet it's mostly under the terms he set forth. Something tells me that Columbia doesn't have many fingers in his pie...
So is it the same NIN, no. But then again no NIN album has been the same NIN, so it's not much of an argument. I for one am glad he's doing well, has a family got sober and dearly hope he never get's divorced or falls off the wagon. He doesn't need to in order to make a NIN album. Trent Reznor has always been NIN, no matter where he is in his life and that will never change.
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