Album review: Nine Inch Nails – The Slip (or, the culmination of Trent Reznor’s madness)

06May08

First an independently-released Brian Eno-esque instrumental album, then a slow trickle of free songs; Trent Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails cohorts now release a full, “proper” album; for free, available for download from the band’s website.

Nine Inch Nails – “The Slip”
NiN.com

A message posted on the Nine Inch Nails website yesterday, presumably from Trent himself, read “thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me“. This could possibly lead you to think The Slip is just some half-arsed stop-gap between albums; and if so, you’d be wrong. Well, kinda.

After the intro of “999,999″, we launch into the loud and abrasive “1,000,000″ , which has something of Year Zero’s “Survivalism” about it’s vocals and distorted guitar. So far, sar enjoyably average. Second track “Letting You”, meanwhile, sits somewhere between this newer, less industrial sound, and the speedy drumming of “March Of The Pigs”, from the industrial, Downward Spiral-days.

“Discipline”, meanwhile, recalls With Teeth’s “Only” – but more so. While initially sort of unsurprising and abit dull, it has grown into a new-wavey, but darker, pop song – or at least as poppy as NiN will ever get, with some lovely piano which, at times, seems like it may lapse into Linkin Park territory. But it doesn’t, because Trent is awesome, and Linkin Park aren’t. “Echoplex”, another of those previously-released free MP3s follows in the same, almost-poppy vein, with some almost-funky bass at the outset. Same for “Head Down”.

“Lights In The Sky” seems more inspired by the Ghosts album(s), with a single, solitary piano and Trent’s voice, one their own. While not reaching the dizzying heights of “Hurt”, it’s still pretty good. And is a nice breather, before we head into the over 7-minute “Corona Radiata”. Starting with a creepy ambience, it, er, stays like that, until a repetitive drum pattern, and some creepy treated-chanting comes in. It’s quite odd, and quite spooky. This is where the album starts to drop off a bit, for me.

“The Four Of Us Are Dying” is too reminiscnet of “Echoplex”, minus the lyrics. Things pick back up for the final track, “Demon Seed”, but it’s a case of too little, too late.

Overall, it’s an album of two halves; the first, a reinviograted, more electronic and poppier, yet still dark and loud Nine Inch Nails album. The other half is more like a collection of left-overs from the Ghosts instrumental albums. Disappointing, but at this price (ie free), who can complain?

Download “Echoplex”