CD review: With Teeth - Nine Inch Nails

[KiwiCoromandel]

Only one man could have made this record. Trent Reznor (who is Nine Inch Nails in the studio, assembling a band to tour) is a notorious perfectionist.

This is only the fourth full-length studio project to bare the Nine Inch Nails name since 1989's debut, Pretty Hate Machine.

The follow-up to that, 1994's The Downward Spiral, made Reznor a post-grunge superstar. He had taken his fascination with David Bowie, Bryan Ferry and gothic rock, combined with the post-thrash tendencies of Skinny Puppy and Ministry - and invented mainstream industrial music.

The opening track on With Teeth(the belated follow-up to 1999's overreaching double, The Fragile) has Reznor pleading "why do you get all the love in the world?" over and over.

He could be saying this to any number of people - but certainly he allowed his creations (Marilyn Manson by intention, and the nu-metal genre, by default) to overpower and overtake him. It's a fair old gripe really and the perfect opening refrain for a man who constantly exudes nihilism, solipsism and self-indulgence through his art.

You Know What You Are? follows and it's a total return to the pulsing jackhammer rhythms of The Downward Spiral.

And then, Reznor provides the album's greatest moment, The Collector. "I pick things up, I am a collector", he states. It's Reznor's dark psyche laid bare; it's the idea that male machinations and fascinations are one in the same. And a spray of Mike Garson-esque piano shows that Reznor's calculated Bowie aping continues.

But he's never been able to replicate Ziggy's canny knack for reinvention. The most frustrating thing some people will find with this album is that a 40 year old millionaire is still singing about alienation.

His heavy beats (Dave Grohl - the Where's Wally? of alt-rock - drums up a storm on a couple of tracks) and New Order-Depeche Mode synth lines still captivate. And that should be enough.

It's a return to The Downward Spiral, which is both good and bad: 11 years ago, you can tell Reznor wishes it was yesterday.

With Teeth is out now through Nothing/Universal.

review:SIMON SWEETMAN