Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth: Album Review
Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth (Interscope, 2005)
It's been going on 6 years since the last Nine Inch Nails album, which nobody bought, came out, which basically makes it like 10 years since Nine Inch Nails was really a going concern. Wanna know something else that's pretty wild to think about? Trent Reznor is now 40 years old, which actually makes him a lot closer in age to my parents than myself. You wonder how much longer he'll continue to make this music for angry teenage girls.
ALL THE LOVE IN THE WORLD
The album begins with Trent singing over some smoothed-out faux-Timbaland as if he was the old cracka Aaliyah. Then, like 3 minutes into it, some pianos (real Billy Joel sounding ish) and other instruments kick in. Altogether, not a bad way to kick off an album.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE?
Loud, Bloc Party-sounding (if only because that's all I'm listening to these days) drums and lots of loud motherfucking screaming. Very "typical Nine Inch Nails" sounding. I wouldn't be surprised if they made this a single, even though I'm not sure who would play it these days.
THE COLLECTOR
Ouch! Check out these lyrics: "I pick things up / I'm a collector / And things they tend to accumulate." Trent's obviously still going after a younger audience here. The rest of the song, the chorus in particular, is pretty good though.
THE HAND THAT FEEDS
I feel like I've heard this one before, but maybe that's just because they've played it on the point. Anyway, this song is the fucking shit. It's really - even though I kinda liked the first few tracks on here - the first track on the album where the song writing and the production really came together.
LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH
This is about as equally as childish-sounding as the rest of this mess, but it's got a lot of interesting things going on musically. Not really a standout.
EVERY DAY IS EXACTLY THE SAME
Now this is more like it. Is Trent playing with an actual band now, or is he still playing all of this shit himself? Perhaps I should have looked that up before I began writing this.
WITH TEETH
You know, I really wish this title track were a better song. I mean, with it being a title track and all. And what's up with that weird-ass chorus: With the teeth-ah!
ONLY
Fuck yeah, man. This is like the goth cracka's take on motherfucking "Billie Jean." Definitely the shot in the arm this album needed as it went past its half way mark. But you know what it kind of reminds me of more than anything else? Motherfucking LCD Soundsystem. I wonder if that was actually intentional.
GETTING SMALLER
Things all of a sudden get a lot faster. Which is good because the first half of this album (not that it was bad or anything) was kind of unnecessarily slow. I don't even know how good this actually is, but its speed makes it easier not to focus on the lyrics.
SUNSPOTS
This album's "Closer." It even kinda sounds like "Closer." We can only hope that the tall Israelis at Interscope commission Mark Romanek, or whatever his name was, to create a similar video. Speaking of which, I hear Tom DeLay is a big fan.
THE LINE BEGINS TO BLUR
Definitely the kind of song you stick in the middle of the album's second half and hope nobody notices.
BESIDE YOU IN TIME
Similarly, I'm not really sure if this is the point in the album when you want to get all experimental. I get the feeling a lot of people are going to be hitting the ol' skip button here.
RIGHT WHERE IT BELONGS
Which brings us to the last track, which is pretty good for what it is. Otherwise, you could just turn this shit off after track 10.
COMMENTS: This is a very solid album - nothing great or anything, but better than you'd expect from a band (or guy, or whatever) at this point in its career. It'll be interesting to see what kind of push this receives from the tall Israelis at Interscope, considering the dude's last album went wood and the only kind of rock you hear on the radio these days is motherfucking dance rock, or whatever they're calling it.
BEST TRACKS: "The Hand That Feeds" "Only" "Sunspots"
