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CD Review: Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth

'With Teeth' has same NIN bite

By DARRYL STERDAN for Jam! Showbiz on April 29, 2005

"You can dress it up, you can try to pretend," barks Trent Reznor, "but you can't change anything in the end." And by you, of course, he means himself.

It has been more than five years since the industrial revolutionary released his last disc The Fragile. But you'd never know it from his fourth studio album With Teeth. In fact, you'd never know it wasn't 1995.

On these 13 cuts, the grooves -- fuelled by the sledgehammer drums of Dave Grohl -- still pump like pistons. The basslines still lumber intimidatingly. The guitars still grind your bones. The synths still scrape your brainpan. The grand piano chords still ring ominously.

Trent's vocals still come in three flavours: The paranoid rasp, the outpatient bellow and the vivisection victim scream.

Admittedly, he still works his mojo just as potently and cathartically as he ever has on darkly magnificent tracks like the tragic All the Love in the World, the confrontational You Know What You Are? and the death disco solipsism of Only. And obviously, he hasn't done it lately.

But good as With Teeth is, there's no pretending that Trent is doing anything here he hasn't done before.

Track Listing:

1. All The Love In The World
2. You Know What You Are?
3. The Collector
4. The Hand That Feeds
5. Love Is Not Enough
6. Every Day Is Exactly The Same
7. With Teeth
8. Only
9. Getting Smaller
10. Sunspots
11. The Line Begins To Blur
12. Beside You In Time
13. Right Where It Belongs

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