THE NIN HOTLINE

Monday November 29, 2004

Pitchfork speaks in positive terms about Nails release

We were pretty shocked when Pitchfork reported on The Downward Spiral last month with nary a sneer from the online rag that wrote one of the two negative reviews of The Fragile that I remember, and gave Things Falling Apart an abysmal 0.4 rating in their review of that CD. Someone said that Rob Harvilla, who'd penned the above October news item, used to DJ at his college radio station, and played both discs of The Fragile in their entirety upon its release, which explained the friendly attitude.

Now, another Rob (Mitchum) has written some downright nice things about the Deluxe Edition of The Downward Spiral, giving the release an 8.3 out of 10.

Unfortunately, they don't touch on the 5.1 mix save for that it exists, and don't talk about the three demo tracks. This is possibly attributable to the relatively common knowledge that Pitchfork tends to review MP3 downloads rather than legitimate promotional copies, and it's a shame because while a ten year old album and it's b-sides gets decent accolades, the surround mix really puts it over the top, in my admittedly biased opinion. I got my 5.1 DVD system (with five speakers and a subwoofer!) for $10 as a display unit at a Radio Shack... if you don't have a 5.1 system by now in some fashion, you're really out of excuses at this point (except for the one about Chinese slave labor, maybe).

All bitching/constructive-criticism aside, it's a good review on all counts, and it's refreshing to see a Reznor write-up on that site that doesn't serve solely as a Pitchfork Media whipping post.