The following are five little known facts about Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails and Reznor’s new album With Teeth.
Little known Nine Inch Nail fact #1: Trent Reznor is the only person in the band, playing every instrument and singing every song, thus making Nine Inch Nails (at least this new album) a solo act. While this might conger thoughts of the sublime/awe-inspiring, “That’s amazing! How the hell does he do that?” it also says something about how easily people are impressed.
Maybe Reznor hasn’t heard the old adage of “two heads are better than one,” perhaps he is socially awkward or it just could be that he’s a complete asshole who no one will work with. Then again, maybe the NIN credo is “two’s a crowd,” but something is distinctly lacking from Reznor’s music.
Whatever the case, Reznor/NIN’s new album With Teeth seems to be a testament to the fact that you can’t do it all by yourself. Reznor might be a virtuoso and he might be some sort of “rock infused with emo lyrical self-indulgent” genius, but his music lacks a sense of collaboration, leaving behind nothing more than a guilty pleasure. It is something that is interesting to listen to and you kind of think sucks, but is enjoyable to sing along with while in your mind smugly mocking it.
Little known Nine Inch Nails fact #2: Reznor released his first single, “The Hand That Feeds,” as a garage band 2.0 file (available for free download from www.nin.com) so that fans can create their own remix. While this is an innovative technological idea (although it annoyingly panders to Mac fans), Reznor might have done this because “The Hand That Feeds” is a terrible song.
The simple semantics of the word “terrible” might not come across as emphatically in text as it might in speech, but this song is absolutely, without a doubt, hands down, willfully terrible. But Reznor might have known this, thus asking his fans to clean up his mess. For the most part, this song is just not what embodies NIN — it is neither ambitious nor does it especially rock. Most annoying about it are its inane lyrics: “Just how deep do you believe? Will you bite the hand that feeds? Will you chew until it bleeds? Can you get up off your knees? Are you brave enough to see?” These horrid words make up the song’s painful chorus. Reznor is no poet and, in this case, sounds like some sort of goth seventh grader. But one should not judge the entire album by one bad song.
Little known Nine Inch Nail fact #3: Reznor loves to name his songs after words he repeats countless times throughout the song. For instance, the opening track “All the Love in the World,” comes in at just more than five minutes in length. However, with around three minutes left in the song, Reznor simply repeats the words, “Why do you get all the love in the world?” over and over. It is unfortunate, because this song is good (maybe the best on the album). It’s just a shame that Reznor didn’t have anything more profound to say.
It is said that repetition is for emphasis, but Reznor has simply gone overboard. The second song, “You Know What You Are?” employs the same technique; however, for a dash of flavor Reznor screams, “Don’t you f–king know what you are?” to some sort of static noise distortion. Sadly these two songs are not the exception, as most of the album seems to ponder (or scream at its listeners for that matter) stupid rhetorical questions.
Little known Nine Inch Nail fact #4: Reznor used all digital equipment to produce With Teeth, thus making it easy to play every instrument all by himself. But strangely enough, Reznor’s digital technique sounds, at times, pretty good. His beats are fresh, the drums kickin’ and the guitar rocks for the majority of the album.
But then again, does With Teeth lose credibility because, in essence, some of the instrumentals are artificial? Apart from being some sort of musical philosophical question that some 20th century Plato could answer, it really shouldn’t matter. Let’s put all that music snobbery behind us, because if it sounds cool then it is cool. Right?
Little known Nine Inch Nail fact #5: With Teeth is not a bad album by any means. In fact, it’s a little catchy. Reznor’s electronic noise has delivered, signed and sealed, a solid rock album. But, then again, he had to go and write all those crappy lyrics, so it is sort of balanced out on the musical scale. You might scoff at NIN and all the preconceptions and judgements that go with its music, but as rock albums go, this one isn’t all that bad and, at times, rocks more than you would expect.
Grade: B
