Nine Inch Nails 'With Teeth'
By unknown for ntlworld Music on April 29, 2005
Nine Inch Nails (aka Trent Reznor and whoever he's teamed with at the time) have been missing in action for far too long. With Teeth, however, is the most commercial record we've heard from him thus far.
"I'm approaching this record from a totally different mindset and strategy than The Fragile, so it sounds vastly different to me," said Trent, who insisted the record had to be orchestrated using only 'monophonic voices'. That's no chords to you and me, resulting in a riff-crazy concoction of industrial beats and breathless vitriol.
That said, opener All The Love In The World is the exception to the rule. It's a ballad in the mould of Hurt (the Reznor track Johnny Cash covered), except the angular rhythms come straight out of Aphex Twin's handbook.
It ushers in the intense, uptempo numbers, which start with You Know What You Are, all aggressive drums and demonic shrieks. The Collector, meanwhile, plays around with awkward rhythms, recalling an industrial take on Pink Floyd's Money, Trent offsetting the distortion with some Thelonious Monk-style discordant piano. As for The Hand That Feeds, it proves Trent's trademark war cry is as valid as ever, confronting as it does those Americans who are oblivious to why their oil is so cheap.
In the '90s NIN sounded scarily alien to anyone in love with melody but today the same fuzzy, clanging sounds frighteningly relevant. The suburbs will be awash with badly dyed black hair all over again, it seems.