best post-fragile nine inch nails tracks

  On 4/24/2010 at 4:45 PM, thepilot said:

It is amazing how many people have gleaned their current musical trajectories through some or another association with reznor. Those two aphex tracks on the downward spiral remix record were pretty influential. I give him respect for having the creative vision to include those tracks. Those nin remix records of old had a definite industrial edge (fixed, further...) with the coil involvement and whatnot. Regardless of whether or not the aphex tracks were 'true' remixes or simply two tracks tossed into the nin canon for shits, the very inclusion illustrates reznor being somewhat ahead of the curve at this point. The american union of warp and nothing records gets a lot of shit (no ep 7 bonus noise?????WTF), but I feel if the gesture was made with anything less than honorable intentions, it resulted in exposing citizens of the United States to a few records that would have normally flew under the radar as costly imports. I believe at many points in his career, reznor was/is capable of understanding what exactly constitutes interesting work but he has failed in executing just that in terms of his own output. Therein lies the paradox. He had the foresight to expose a bunch of proto-emo industrial types to the music of Ae, Plaid, and Squarepusher during the nineties and then released the fragile in 1999-2000 which was so far behind those artists in terms of musical vision that one is forced to wonder about the nature of the artist's quality control in terms of his own work. Of course this problem is hardly exclusive to reznor but it is interesting to note the rather crucial role he had in shining a light on a form of music that would become so important to so many here.

  On 4/25/2010 at 2:53 PM, oscillik said:

i saw Nine Inch Nails live during the WITH_TEETH tour. i walked out after 30 mins.

in case you were wondering, they did a mash-up of Closer and The Only Time. cuz, you know... we don't want to hear the end of Closer...

Trent Reznor

  On 4/25/2010 at 3:13 PM, verticalhold said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 2:53 PM, oscillik said:

i saw Nine Inch Nails live during the WITH_TEETH tour. i walked out after 30 mins.

 

in case you were wondering, they did a mash-up of Closer and The Only Time. cuz, you know... we don't want to hear the end of Closer...

 

 

Trent Reznor

i saw them at (what was called) the Carling Academy in Birmingham. The sound system was shit, the band was pretty bad compared to footage i've seen of previous tours, and we got crushed at the front.

also one other thing that pissed me off, it's your opinion on whether it makes me out to be a pretentious twat...i think it does:

when we waited in the queue to get into the venue, there were some young'uns waiting too...conversing and such. i overheard something along the lines of "oh yeah, have you seen the Vodafone advert on telly? it's got the new Nine Inch Nails track on it, you know...The Perfect Drug".

it was 2005. The Perfect Drug came out in 1997. i wanted to smack the kid senseless.

  On 4/25/2010 at 3:28 PM, oscillik said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 3:13 PM, verticalhold said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 2:53 PM, oscillik said:

i saw Nine Inch Nails live during the WITH_TEETH tour. i walked out after 30 mins.

 

in case you were wondering, they did a mash-up of Closer and The Only Time. cuz, you know... we don't want to hear the end of Closer...

 

 

Trent Reznor

i saw them at (what was called) the Carling Academy in Birmingham. The sound system was shit, the band was pretty bad compared to footage i've seen of previous tours, and we got crushed at the front.

 

also one other thing that pissed me off, it's your opinion on whether it makes me out to be a pretentious twat...i think it does:

 

when we waited in the queue to get into the venue, there were some young'uns waiting too...conversing and such. i overheard something along the lines of "oh yeah, have you seen the Vodafone advert on telly? it's got the new Nine Inch Nails track on it, you know...The Perfect Drug".

 

it was 2005. The Perfect Drug came out in 1997. i wanted to smack the kid senseless.

THIS,

and that Trent denounced The Fragile upon releasing With Teeth. (Their guitarist, dunno if he's still in the band but I mean the guy that was touring for With Teeth, acted like a complete cock-rocking dick; jumping around and kicking the amps for the whole gig

I can't really complain about the set list though; was about 30 songs, including Dead Souls and Burn... but nothing really stood out and Trent couldn't even sing Hurt

OK I'll stop now

  On 4/25/2010 at 3:13 PM, verticalhold said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 2:53 PM, oscillik said:

i saw Nine Inch Nails live during the WITH_TEETH tour. i walked out after 30 mins.

 

in case you were wondering, they did a mash-up of Closer and The Only Time. cuz, you know... we don't want to hear the end of Closer...

 

 

Trent Reznor

Maha yeah the end is the only good part of that song... But it's so damn good that it makes the rest of the tune worthwhile. I was pissed when he started doing that shitty mashup...... Coincided with him recruiting the worst lineup they've ever had too (most notably for the inclusion of that atrocious guitarist Aaron North who spent more time shaking his leg in the air than even attempting to play the guitar properly)

I must say, the Wave Goodbye tour was far better though. They played the fuckin Downward Spiral! At every show!

Plus he fired Aaron and got Robin Finck back, who can actually play with some subtlety and taste

  On 4/25/2010 at 11:50 AM, Fred McGriff said:

to be perfectly honest, the downward spiral might very well be the greatest album of all time. seriously.

i have to somewhat agree.. Trent said he 'outbleaked himself' with it, even though that's what makes it and Broken so awesome. he was pissed.. and passion creates good art. he should get pissed again.

  On 4/25/2010 at 4:48 PM, mafted said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 11:50 AM, Fred McGriff said:

to be perfectly honest, the downward spiral might very well be the greatest album of all time. seriously.

 

 

i have to somewhat agree.. Trent said he 'outbleaked himself' with it, even though that's what makes it and Broken so awesome. he was pissed.. and passion creates good art. he should get pissed again.

It's be pretty hard to be pissed when you got a wife like the one he's snared!

The Downward Spiral is in my top five albums of all time. Undoubtedly. Depending on what day of the week you ask me I might say it's the best album ever... Devin Townsend's Infinity gives it a run for it's money tho.

Downward spiral best album ever? For real? Lol

I figured I'd weigh in on this, despite my opinion being represented in this thread already. I remember when TDS came out.... Was a great year for me. I used to take that album and play it in my cd rom while playing Doom 2 WAD files I found on some compilation disk in the game store. No internet back then really.... At any rate, I loved the shit out of that album. The remix album turned me onto Aphex too, so there's that. When the fraj-ee-lay (<-christmas story) came out, I didn't care. I had been onto bigger and better things at that point. It didn't offend my ears, but i didn't own it. In about 2004, this chick I hung out with alot at the time forced me to listen and it eventually grew on me. Everything thereafter, with the exception of Ghosts, makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Ghosts is a bit aimless, but sounds good, and doesn't have his voice on it, which anymore is a huge turnoff. Anymore, with his voice comes the mental image of HIM, and I honestly can't stand to look at him anymore with those tough guy muscles. It's just the way he carries himself, coupled with the fact that a good song cannot come out of him unless he is tortured inside, and is using alcohol/drugs. Sobriety really fucked him up, sorry to say.

In summation -

TDS & before -

Fraj-ee-lay - It's ok. As Fred said, if it was a single condensed disk, it would have clicked easier.

After (with exception to Ghosts) - , , etc.

Ghosts is just kind of THERE. It is what it is. I don't listen to it ever, but it's not bad. Trent needs to take Trent out of NIN, at least vocally. They should just try to make mental instrumental moody shit from here on out.

  On 4/25/2010 at 8:40 PM, sneaksta303 said:

Trent needs to take Trent out of NIN, at least vocally. They should just try to make mental instrumental moody shit from here on out.

the Quake soundtrack is fucking brilliant, and i'd love to hear more stuff along a similar lines. and the stuff he did for Lost Highway. really textural stuff.

see? exactly! I forgot about quake there for a minute, but that proves it. Good call.

Seriously though, The Fragile could not be one disk only. That would be straight up gay because it would undoubtedly lose many of the instrumental tracks that make it the fuckin bomb.

The only way you could make it better by ditching anything would be to remove 'No You Don't' and 'Starfuckers'. One childish temper-tantrum per disk; cut em both and it's perfection from start to finish.

starfuckers is one of the worst things nin has done

and unfortunately trent seems to love that song

It would be so easy to shrug off that song if rez was all "sorry guys, now that shit was gay. I know and I'm sorry". It is the simple fact that he is not embarrassed by it or at least refuses to acknowledge it as a misstep. I remember being so turned on by that first single that came out before the release (can't remember name). It was just a little piano build-up with an interesting pay-off but it worked and was perceived by me as a harbinger of the record to come. Then I heard starfucker and was like wh-wh-what? There is no excuse for a grown man to write lyrics like that. Well maybe nothing short of a severe mental handicap. I think he labored over that record so much that he lost touch with what good work was. That album was pushed back numerous times. There comes a point when you have your head up your ass for so long that you never really pull it out. You just get used to the constant smell of shit.

  On 4/25/2010 at 10:10 PM, thepilot said:

I remember being so turned on by that first single that came out before the release (can't remember name).

  On 4/25/2010 at 9:28 PM, Capsaicin said:

starfuckers is one of the worst things nin has done

 

and unfortunately trent seems to love that song

Actually he stopped playing it partway through the With Teeth tour and never performed it ever again.

Yeah Starfuckers is pretty shit...what an embarrassment at the time. And it seems to have been the model for all the bad tracks on the future albums. I think mainly it's his vocal delivery that's been the problem since then. With drugs and alcohol gone, the angst just hasn't been real I guess.

For some reason, despite not liking the material after The Downward Spiral as much as the early stuff, I have purchased physical copies of every single album released (not singles and remix albums), up to and including the free download Ghosts and The Slip. This is even after The Fragile taking a long time to grow on me and being disappointed with WITH_TEETH. So why do I do this? I don't know. Perhaps it's because NIN was important to me when I was younger, and I'm just stuck with him/them. It's not that he needs the money and I'm buying to support, maybe it's just for collection purposes. I agree with many of you that ever since he quit drugs and drinking, his lyrics and vocals are more annoying than anything and he should focus on writing some awesome instrumental stuff, perhaps. It's not that I hate all his more recent vocals, it just tends to sound cheesy too often.

Year Zero isn't as bad as many make it out to be, but it's definitely not his best by a mile. I like some of the songs quite a bit, and as a whole it's definitely better than WITH_TEETH (which had a few great tracks itself - need to rip that and give it another listen). I'm going to play it now so I can comment track by track.

HYPERPOWER! - a fine intro 3.5/5

The Beginning of the End - not bad. 3/5

Survivalism - good musically but the vocals are kind of annoying. 3/5

The Good Soldier - pretty chill, good music and the vocals don't bother me much. 3.5/5

Vessel - one of my favorites on the album. 4.5/5

Me, I'm Not - I like this one, nothing about the vocals bothers me, music's quite good. 4/5

Capital G - Vocals totally ruin this one, WTF. The music's not bad though. 2/5

My Violent Heart - Meh, chorus vocals are pretty shit. It's otherwise decent. 2.5/5

The Warning - another favorite. 4.5/5

God Given - Meh, more shit vocals. 2.5/5

Meet Your Master - Decent, nothing really bothers me much but it's not great. 3/5

The Greater Good - Good vibe here, solid instrumental with sparse soft dreamy vocals. Like something from Ghosts but actually fleshed out. 4/5

The Great Destroyer - quite good but the part "I am the GREAT DESTROYERRRRRRR!!!" is cringe-worthy But before and after that it's cool. 3.5/5

Another Version of the Truth - A nice quiet piano track. 3.5/5

In This Twilight - Pretty good crunchy track, alright vocals. 3.5/5

Zero-Sum - Good closer, nice vocals. See this is the type of vocals that are good, dubdued dreamy stuff, some distortion. None of that cheesy anthem stuff. 4.5/5

And The Perfect Drug...am I the only one that never liked that song? The vocals are as bad as all the later-era bad vocal songs. I don't hate it, but never saw what people liked about it.

I need to give With_Teeth another listen, but ones I remember liking a lot are 'Sunspots' and 'Every Day Is Exactly The Same', I think 'Only' too. I'm actually listening to the clips on Amazon now and it seems I enjoyed this more than I'm remembering. The Hand That Feeds is crap though.

Now I'm gonna have to play more NIN. It's sad that it's like a guilty pleasure now. I don't like him coming up too high in my last.fm charts.

I remember liking the end of The Great Destroyer

'The Great Destroyer' is mad. Fuckin excellent live, especially when he brought in the 'Happiness in Slavery' jam

The Collector

Only

Getting Smaller

Beside you in Time

Right Where it Belongs

Me, I'm Not

My Violent Heart

The Warning

God Given

Another Version of the Truth

In This Twilight

Zero-Sum

24 Ghosts III

Letting You

Echoplex

Corona Radiata

Demon Seed

  On 4/25/2010 at 11:38 PM, Greg Reason said:

'The Great Destroyer' is mad. Fuckin excellent live, especially when he brought in the 'Happiness in Slavery' jam

Yeah it really is a great song but he ruins it with the part of the vocals I mentioned.

  On 4/26/2010 at 4:03 AM, sidewinder said:

  On 4/25/2010 at 11:38 PM, Greg Reason said:

'The Great Destroyer' is mad. Fuckin excellent live, especially when he brought in the 'Happiness in Slavery' jam

Yeah it really is a great song but he ruins it with the part of the vocals I mentioned.

I dunno. Dude's into Queen so I forgive him for his occasional bombastic vocal silliness.

its crazy how polarizing the fragile is for such a really good record.

here is the macdonalds rip off art.

Wow that is intense. Exact same photos. They must have obtained the rights!?

haha TR will lose his shit when he sees that