Archive for the ‘Nine Inch Nails’ Category
Nine Inch Nails – The Slip
“…I slip into…”
The two words that Trent Reznor begins his roller coaster of an album with are quite easy to understand but can still be interpreted in many different ways. But that will be your task and your mission and your quest and your whatever-the-hell-else-you-wanna-call-it… to figure the meaning out… should you chose to listen to this record.
In case you missed something – The Slip was released on May 5th, 2008 and, hold on tight – here comes our first 90 degree turn – it was available for free. That’s right, you heard me. Free. No money need to be paid. Nothing. Now, you probably already know about it but maybe, just maybe… you, unlike myself, aren’t a fan of Reznor’s work – which means… well it only means that you do not know about it. Simple as that.
All in all – Nine Inch Nails made The Slip available at no charge, with unlimited amount of downloads (last time I checked) from their official website as a “thanks” to their fans for all the support and love and whatnot. Good fellaz aren’t they? Now, one may think that if the album is available for free – it may not be as good as the other albums that were released previously (the album may be a piece of dog crap if you want to put it this way)…. and will be so bloody wrong that I wouldn’t have the words to describe how wrong would that person be…
In my personal opinion the album isn’t just good, it is very close to being perfect. And trust me – I know what words like “perfect” mean, and I’m goddamn serious about my statement.
“I slip into” says Trent and short and very psychedelic intro 999,999 se quays into an explosive and energetic 1,000,000 that starts thumping on your eardrums and waking you up in case you’d fallen asleep during the first song, with a snare and distorted guitar. Just like a roller coaster that after climbing up falls down like a freaking rock, scaring the shit out of everybody on board… After that goes Letting You which ends with deafening chords and a lot of digital clipping, which we all love… What? No? We don’t? Well hey, you gotta love that digital clipping thing if you love NIN. Without it they’re like a donut without a…. hole.
After Letting You the roller coaster slows down a little bit and lets you enjoy the ride with Discipline… see what I did there? Enjoy the ride with discipline? No? No one? Okay, moving along. With a drum pattern that almost makes you want to dance and a beautiful piano on the background you feel like you can’t help yourself but listen all the way through without pressing the pause button. And you really should listen because after Discipline comes another dance-inspiring drum patterns and catchy bass lines of Echoplex and Head Down.
At this point the roller coaster really slows down and lets you fully relax while enjoying beautiful and really sad ballad – Lights In The Sky. It’s not nearly as good as Hurt, but damn it’s good enough to make me want to listen to it at least twice in a row, and with my busy schedule – that’s something!
After Lights In The Sky seamlessly transition themselves into the next song – The Slip slows down to a crawl and Corona Radiata takes over the entire space… Which we don’t mind as long as we’re patient enough to wait until the ambient stuff ends and some melody starts. And if we do – we get rewarded… Not gonna spoil the surprise for you though, so you just gonna have to listen… But fast-forwarding is always an option. Shhhh, I never said that!
The next song might just be my favourite (off this album that is). If you drive a car – please, and I can’t emphasize this enough, PLEASE do this: play this song while driving. The road has to be long, lonesome, and preferably – dark. I’m always looking for good driving songs and this one is on my top 5 list.
After The Four Of Us Are Dying the roller coaster picks up where it left off on Head Down and punches you in the head (lightly) with Demon Seed. Even though this one doesn’t seem like a perfect ending song (which is why I’m saying that the album is very close to being perfect) – it’s still a very good song that’s worth listening to just for the hell of checking out some effects that NIN came up with. Well and the lyrics… well and everything else too. So just listen to the song, damn it!
Overall – the whole thing is very good. I’m giving it 9.5/10 without any hesitation whatsoever. If you’re into weird effects and Trent’s lyrics, if you enjoy listening to beautifully produced (but not over-produced) records – this one is a must have.
The retail version comes with some extra stuff that I’m not telling you about, but the downloadable version comes in crazy- high definition,… and you will only be able to hear the difference if you have speakers that cost about $50,000 (yeah, there are some that cost this much… crazy world isn’t it?)
So you enjoy the shit out of this album and may the force be with you.
Nine Inch Nails – Discipline
Nine Inch Nails – The Four of Us are Dying
Nine Inch Nails – Echoplex
Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV Review
After listening to all 36 songs on NIN’s Ghosts I-IV, I would pigeonhole this album along with all NIN remix albums into an “experimental” category rather than include it in the NIN discography. If you bought this album expecting good new NIN materials, you’ll be very disappointed.
Ghosts I-IV consists of 36 instrumental tracks. Most of the songs aren’t very instrumental and there’s a lot of bass and static and distortion sounds. All the tracks on this album sounds basically like old NIN classics without the vocal, guitars, or energy. This is kind of disappointing because they did make the theme for Fight Club and it was so good.
There are some tracks that are quite nice and relaxing to listen to but the way they’re mixed together just sort of made everything a mess and nothing is very memorable. After the first couple of songs, everything actually start to sound kind of similar. I can group every track on this album into two categories: “hurt”-sounding and “closer”-sounding.
All in all, It would make a nice soundtrack to life and is something I would listen to while doing homework or working or maybe even sleeping if I take all the distortion noise tracks out but it’s nothing to rock out to.
Download Ghosts I here.
Buy the album at: Amazon
