Page 1 of 11 1 2 3 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 30 of 321

Thread: Rank NIN Albums

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    NY
    Posts
    724
    Mentioned
    5 Post(s)

    Rank NIN Albums

    A bit of opinionated, subjective narcissism here, but rank them anyway!

    For me, it's settled on:

    The Fragile
    With Teeth
    The Downward Spiral
    Broken
    Year Zero
    Pretty Hate Machine
    The Slip


    I refrained from putting Ghosts I-IV or the soundtracks in there because the inclusion of vocals and lyrics as primary narrative on an album does make it slightly hard to compare, although I would say that, musically, Ghosts and the soundtracks are the best stuff he's ever written.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    florida
    Posts
    1,024
    Mentioned
    53 Post(s)
    For what it's worth:

    the downward spiral
    the fragile
    year zero
    dragon tattoo
    ghosts i-iv
    the social network
    broken
    pretty hate machine
    the slip
    with teeth
    Last edited by spahn; 12-09-2011 at 01:43 PM. Reason: skipped out on the instrumental albums

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Monterey Bay, Ca
    Posts
    3,257
    Mentioned
    62 Post(s)
    The Downward Spiral
    The Fragile
    Year Zero
    Broken
    Dragon Tattoo
    Ghosts
    Social Network
    PHM
    With Teeth
    Slip


    Honestly I don't know how the lack of lyrics automatically makes it not music... that seems really stupid to me. Vox are but one instrument, not the lynchpin of the whole operation.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    NY
    Posts
    724
    Mentioned
    5 Post(s)
    Ha! When did I say 'not music'? I guess I meant to say, for me personally, it wouldn't be fair, because they would be numbers 1, 2, and 3! And I was just ranking the albums that have rock/pop/electronic songs in a verse-chorus-other section form. Do whatever you want!

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Monterey Bay, Ca
    Posts
    3,257
    Mentioned
    62 Post(s)
    Fair enough.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Indiana
    Posts
    4,261
    Mentioned
    63 Post(s)
    The Downward Spiral/The Fragile
    Ghosts I-IV
    The Social Network
    Year Zero
    Broken
    With Teeth
    The Slip
    Pretty Hate Machine

    Dragon Tattoo will be ranked once I listen to it through again. At the moment I would say it might end up between Ghosts I-IV and The Social Network.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    England
    Posts
    1,071
    Mentioned
    20 Post(s)
    1. The Downward Spiral - The layering of sounds in this album is so dense, yet every song has a strong melodic core. Absolute masterpiece of composition. Furthermore, every song is just great. Every single one. While the album's concept doesn't resonate as strongly with me as The Fragile, Broken or With Teeth, song-by-song I don't think it has an equal among NIN or pretty much anything else.
    2. Year Zero - Strongly conveyed concept, lots of seriously enjoyable electronic noise. My only problem with Year Zero is the samey way the tracks start: they mostly solo the rhythm for a few seconds (which continues unmodified throughout much of the song) before vocals enter. Other than that, I think it's a great sound and a great album.
    3. Broken - Another brilliantly realised concept, with nihilism and sexuality referring to oppressive domination by the record label. Being born in the TDS era the layered production and inventive composition are top-notch, and the industrial metal style yields some scorching material. I think it starts to flag later on - I'm not fond of Gave Up or Suck - and it doesn't have one of Trent's typically perfect closing tracks, so it stays behind Year Zero, despite containing some of my favourite NIN songs.
    4. The Fragile - This is actually my favourite period for NIN material - I absolutely adore the new songs on Still and Things Falling Apart, plus Deep, Perfect Drug and the menu music for And All That Could Have Been. But the album itself has never entirely clicked with me, which is why I always play it with the additional period material spliced into the playlist (at which point it does become an absolutely incredible experience, but we're rating the vanilla albums here). I find the blaring layered guitars rather grating, and they dominate the album to such a degree that the emotional tone to the story rarely sees the light of day. In my opinion.
    5. The Slip - I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with The Slip, but after making a few minor modifications I'm entirely happy with it. Love Letting You and The Four Of Us Are Dying.
    6. With Teeth - Another love/hater... I think the album's narrative, and the themes it draws upon, are amazing. All the songs have at least the germ of brilliance, but with very few exceptions I think they fail to realise their full potential - partly because of the reliance on comparatively conventional-sounding guitars, but mostly because of the ridiculously prominent and heavy yet frequently unimaginative drumming.
    7. Quake OST - Not the most dynamic collection of music, but it works so well as ambient music, and it's enormously evocative. Like Antichrist Superstar, it almost feels like a tangent of the Downward Spiral concept. Some of the later tracks are just plain boring, but that's made up for with a rare bit of genuine industrial (and a bloody awesome bit, too) as the opening track.
    8. Pretty Hate Machine - Not enormously keen on this one... I like how accessible it is, and there are some great songs (I particularly love Sin). But the Purest Feeling collection seems to have far more soul in its simplistic composition than the finished album does - it's like the army of producers marched through and tore out its heart. It doesn't feel like a cohesive or emotive set of music to me. If I'm in an '80s mood, though, it's a fun listen.
    9. Ghosts I-IV - None of the tracks are bad, but collectively I find Ghosts a bit hard to listen to, and I get seriously bored if I try listening to the whole collection in one setting. It's too invasive for true ambient listening, but not gripping or evocative enough for primary music (which in my opinion The Social Network OST is, and GWTDT just about gets away with despite the gargantuan length). It makes effective computer game background music, though, which is how I normally use it.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Cherokee, NC
    Posts
    596
    Mentioned
    13 Post(s)
    1. The Fragile
    The Downward Spiral
    With Teeth
    The Social Network
    Year Zero
    Pretty Hate Machine
    The Slip
    Broken
    Ghosts I-IV

    Listening to GWTDT right now. So far, it's pretty good.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Bucharest
    Posts
    469
    Mentioned
    18 Post(s)
    1. The Fragile
    2. Broken
    3. Pretty Hate Machine
    4. The Downward Spiral
    5. With Teeth
    6. Year Zero
    7. Ghosts I-IV
    8. The Slip

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    NY
    Posts
    724
    Mentioned
    5 Post(s)
    Vertigo, what modifications on The Slip do you speak of?

    On blue moons, With Teeth sliiiightly edges out The Fragile for me as my favorite.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Posts
    1,232
    Mentioned
    85 Post(s)
    1. The Downward Spiral
    2. The Fragile
    3. Pretty Hate Machine
    4. Broken
    5. Ghosts I-IV
    6. Year Zero
    7. With Teeth
    8. The Slip

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Posts
    917
    Mentioned
    34 Post(s)
    1. The Fragile
    2. With Teeth
    3. The Downward Spiral
    4. Year Zero
    5. Pretty Hate Machine
    6. The Slip
    7. Ghosts I-IV
    8. Broken

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Los Angeles, CA
    Posts
    141
    Mentioned
    29 Post(s)
    Alright, I'll give in.
    1. The Fragile
    2. The Downward Spiral
    3. Year Zero
    4. Broken
    5. Pretty Hate Machine
    6. With Teeth
    7. Ghosts
    8. The Slip
    TGWTDT and TSN are sort of outside of scope for me.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Posts
    42
    Mentioned
    1 Post(s)
    Hmm...OK.

    The Downward Spiral – Just an incredible album from start to finish. I listen to it all of the time and am still amazed by it.

    Pretty Hate Machine – First listened to this album in 1991 when I was 10 years old. It was drastically different than anything I was listening to at the time. Harder than Depeche Mode and the collage of sounds surpassed any hair metal band of that time, it sounds dated today, but at the time it was revolutionary. Sadly, I don’t listen to it much anymore, but it’s definitely my second favorite, maybe because of nostalgia. Another thing I really love about this album, TR vocals and writting is very unique to this album. The passion is extremely apparent on this album.

    The Fragile – At the time, never have I seen a package done so elaborately. First album, where I could finally get hyped about. I remember I just had gotten a computer with internet, 1999, and the first place I went to was nin.com., the second mtv.com (haha). MTV.com had a 30 second teaser of TDTWA, which is funny now, because if you listen to the first 30 seconds of TDTWA, it’s just noise and no song. I remember buying the album from CD Warehouse and going straight home and putting the CD in the stereo, playing it as loud as I could. The opening song blew me away. I must admit though,it took several years to appreciate the whole album. The B-sides from this era are the best.

    Broken – This album was the hardest for me to get into. I would listen to PHM everyday and I think I had one of those mail-in CD subscriptions (the best way to steal CDs at the time) and this was mailed to my house. I popped it in, and was it was too much noise for me at the time. Not until TDS was released and digested was I able to go back and listen to Broken. I would like a re-master of Broken before a re-master of TF. Random memory: Playing Broken while playing Road Rash II on mute.

    The Social Network – Great music I can listen to at work without offending anyone.

    Year Zero – Good album, I don’t like every song off the album, but the ones I do, I REALLY like them. The Great Destroyer’s ending, mind-blowing.

    The Slip – Very good album, I like most of the songs from this album. The only fault for me was that it seemed like leftover tracks from WT, YZ and Ghosts.

    With Teeth – Again, probably the weakest album out of the bunch, but compared to all other albums out there, this is strong album. Probably, first album where I didn’t like every single song.

    The Girl with Dragon Tattoo – Just started listening today.

    Ghosts I-IV – When I first listened to this I was kinda bored by the first track, then the second track came on, bored again. Freaking finally, third track had some guts to it. I was alright, I am going to hear some Driver Down type songs. Well, that didn’t exactly happen, but I do like the album. Some songs took longer to like than others.
    Last edited by somewhatdamaged; 12-09-2011 at 11:29 PM. Reason: Quick reply messed up my editting.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    2,516
    Mentioned
    24 Post(s)
    Hm.

    I think my top album is The Fragile. It's not an album I can just pop in whenever - I have to commit to it, be in the right mindset for it. And that's when it really shows how fantastic it is. I'm the sort of person that likes really long albums that seem to go on forever, and The Fragile has that feel to it. You start out not really knowing where you're going to end, on the first listen at least. It's really a masterpiece.

    After that I'd put Ghosts I-IV. Unlike The Fragile, I can listen to this whenever I want and still really enjoy the musicality of it; most of the tracks are pretty simple, yeah, but they're inventive, and that's what makes this album great.

    I suppose it doesn't particularly count, but I always include Still right after Ghosts. I feel like Still is an album that gets overlooked by people who just look at the surface-level NIN. But it's a beautiful album. The arrangements of the old songs are very well done, and the new songs are some of the best of this era. Except for Gone, Still. But whatever.

    After that comes With Teeth. This was the first album I really heard front-to-back, and its accessibility pushed me to explore the rest of the catalogue. I think the fact that there's no overarching theme to the album makes it nice to listen to, because you can mess with the tracklist in a way that you can't with some of the other works.

    Year Zero is the next one on my list, because the concept was so...foreign to me. The overtness of the theme, the fierceness of the message in the album, was quite impressive to hear after hearing TDS and TF, which were so introspective, whereas YZ looks around at the world instead. The repetitiveness of the songs tends to get to me, though. Every song starts with a fucking drumbeat...

    Fuck. What do I have left...

    I don't really have much reason for the placement of the next few albums. I'm not terribly fond of how vicious and abrasive The Downward Spiral and Broken are for nearly the entirety of both. I like the variation that 's in the other albums.

    Pretty Hate Machine feels sort of dated to me, but depending on the day I'll place it above TDS/Broken (which are pretty much joined at the hip for me.)

    The Slip was good when I heard it, but the more I delved into the older work, the more I realized that it was fairly subpar, which is understandable considering how quickly it was put out. But still. Oh well.

    With regards to TSN and TGWTDT, they'd probably fall between Ghosts and Still. TGWTDT would rank higher because it, in my opinion, is a greater work than TSN.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Vancouver, BC
    Posts
    4,022
    Mentioned
    141 Post(s)
    1. The Fragile
    2. The Downward Spiral
    3. With_Teeth
    4. The Slip
    5. Pretty Hate Machine
    6. Broken
    7. Year Zero
    8. Ghosts I-IV

    That was very hard...The first 3 are pretty much my top 3 albums, everything after is hard to rank. So my top 3 are The Fragile, TDS and W_T and then everything else is kind of on par with each other, expect Year Zero, I really don't care too much for that, and Ghosts is good for what it is, but I very rarely get an urge to randomly want to ghosts just lounging around.

    I think it would have been easier to rank 15 songs or so then the albums...there is like 1-2 really amazing songs spread out on each album. Sunspots anyone?

    *****EDIT*****
    above was my original post made a hour ago, I don't want to modify it it any way to show you how an opinion can change after revisiting an album...

    So I went back and listened to With_Teeth and I must say, it does NOT deserve a top 3 spot at all. In fact asside from Sunspots, I really didn't care to listen to much else. Getting Smaller and The Line begins to Blur are good as well, but I actually found myself dis-interested in most of the songs as I listened to them, and I just wanted to skip them. Funny was when I typed that message I got such an urge to listen to With_Teeth, but soon after throwing it on, it became quite clear that it didn't deserve the top 3 spot...

    believe it or not, I would much rather listen to the Slip, and I know alot of people dislike that one for some reason, but I donno, I think it's a solid work of art, sme of his best work is on there (Demon Seed, Lights in the sky and Head down). So I think with_Teeth would move down not only 1 spot, but 2 spots right below Pretty Hate Machine, After listening to W_T I realzied how classic PHM is, dispite it sounding rather dated.

    new order:

    1. The Fragile
    2. The Downward Spiral
    3. The Slip
    4. Pretty Hate Machine
    5. With_Teeth
    6. Broken
    7. Year Zero
    8. Ghosts I-IV
    Last edited by ManBurning; 12-10-2011 at 01:55 AM.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    362
    Mentioned
    17 Post(s)
    1. pretty hate machine
    2. The Downward Spiral
    3. The Fragile
    4. Year Zero
    5. The Slip
    6. broken
    7. With_Teeth
    8. Ghosts

    Don´t ask me why...just my feeling..

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    England
    Posts
    1,071
    Mentioned
    20 Post(s)
    Quote Originally Posted by joplinpicasso View Post
    Vertigo, what modifications on The Slip do you speak of?
    -On 1,000,000 I cleaned up the "popping" muting noise at the end of each guitar riff and some of the gaps in the guitar (this took a long ass time); EQ tweak on the drum track to make it a bit punchier; shortened the silence before the finale; tinkered with the balance between the instruments.
    -Discipline didn't really need tweaking but I used the multitrack version (which has an extended ending) and faded out each instrument at a different pace, letting the listener analyze the composition as the song winds down.
    -For Echoplex I stripped the bass guitar from a lot of sections (trying to give it a lighter touch and more of a fragile, emotive tone) and messed with the opening drums to simulate the live intro to the song.
    -Lights In The Sky I applied different subtle effects to each piano section, not enough to make it sound weird but enough to provide some dynamism to the track; also boosted the atmospheric effects later in the track to become a primary element of the song.
    -Corona Radiata, just capped the bass booming at a couple of points in the first half of the song. This lets you comfortably listen to it at a higher volume.
    -With Demon Seed I did the obligatory splicing with Ghosts 38, trying to make a more epic closing track. It works very well in my opinion - scatter the Ghosts material correctly and you have great instrumental tangents between verses, it almost feels like a NIN take on Jane's Addiction's Three Days. I didn't just add in sections though, it works best if you swap some 38 elements into DS's sections and vice versa (and some fiddling needs doing to make everything fit together properly).

    Mucho thanks if anyone could be bothered to read through all that...

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    32
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    The Downward Spiral
    The Fragile
    Pretty Hate Machine
    Broken
    With_Teeth
    Year Zero
    The Slip
    Ghosts

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Joined (old ETS): 01 Sep 2004 -- Sydney, Australia
    Posts
    7,357
    Mentioned
    282 Post(s)
    Broken
    Quake OST
    The Fragile
    The Downward Spiral
    The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo OST (see: Great Bird of Prey)
    The Slip
    Year Zero
    Pretty Hate Machine
    Ghosts I-IV
    The Social Network OST
    With Teeth

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    289
    Mentioned
    24 Post(s)
    1. The Fragile
    2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    3. The Downward Spiral
    4. Purest Feeling
    5. The Social Network
    6. Still
    7. Year Zero
    8. Pretty Hate Machine
    9. The Slip
    10. Ghosts I-IV
    11. With Teeth
    12. Broken

  22. #22
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Chekhov, Russia
    Posts
    2,020
    Mentioned
    50 Post(s)
    i grouped them in order of personal significance
    1 pretty hate machine / with teeth ............ these offer the most emotional songs
    2 the fragile / the slip / year zero .............. these feature real wide range of sound
    3 broken / the downward spiral ................. these bite and better kept in the dark
    4 ghosts / various soundtracks ................. these are refreshing from time to time
    5 and all that could have been (live / still) .. these just deserve to be mentioned

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Saskatchewan, Canada
    Posts
    3
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)

    Classics

    Cool thread I had actually given this some thought months ago...

    1. The Downward Spiral 10/5 Stars
    2. The Fragile 7/5 Stars
    3. Broken 5/5 Stars
    4. The Slip 5/5 Stars
    5. Pretty Hate Machine 5/5 Stars
    6. Ghosts 5/5 Stars
    7. Unreleased Remix Tracks Compilation (found online) 4.5/5 Stars
    8. Fixed 4.5/5 Stars
    9. Still 4.5/5 Stars
    10. With Teeth 4.5/5 Stars
    11. Quake Soundtrack 4/5 Stars
    12. Year Zero 4/5 Stars

    5/5 Stars = perfect album, could not be improved on significantly
    6/5 Stars = all around best album of the year
    7/5 Stars = best album in that category for that decade
    8/5 Stars = best album in that genre in a generation
    9/5 Stars = best album in that style period
    10/5 Stars = best album ever made
    Last edited by Cyurus Razor; 12-10-2011 at 12:42 PM.

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Arizona
    Posts
    29
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    Main Albums
    The Fragile
    Ghosts I-IV
    Still
    Year Zero
    The Downward Spiral
    The Slip
    With Teeth
    Broken
    Pretty Hate Machine

    Remix Albums

    Things Falling Apart
    Fixed
    Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D
    Further Down the Spiral
    Last edited by Trunkjob; 12-19-2011 at 09:14 PM.

  25. #25
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    London
    Posts
    527
    Mentioned
    2 Post(s)
    1 - Without a Doubt - The Downward Spiral - This will be seen as a historical point in music in the future. Its ahead of its time. Its a stone cold masterpiece of late 20th century music. Trent will be seen in decades time as a electronic mozart figure along with Aphex Twin. If historians were to pick 50 masterpieces from the 20th century in a few hundred years time this would be one of them. Its like if Shakespeare made music, but used sounds instead of words, you can listen to it for years and years and hear it in different ways and marvel at the genius of it

    2 - The Fragile - More commercial, the genius is still there, idea after idea, everything works, countless songs. Many people would die to come up with some of the stuff on that album, its dense atmospheric, easier to get into. There are more good songs on this album, despite not being on the same level as the downward Spiral, its still one of my favs and i adore it.

    3 - Broken -Exhilarating, sexy, dirty, nasty, funky, hard, its a real good album for fucking. Its a shot of adrenaline, it makes you feel alive. Proper rock n roll. Makes everything else you hear after it sound like music for pussies, this is the real deal.

    4 - Pretty Hate Machine - Sounds older than it acctually is - its like the entire 1980's encapsulated onto one record, if it had come out in England in 1984 it would have been one of the biggest selling albums of the decade and Trent would have been given the same stature as George Michael and Boy George, New Order, Depeche Mode the Petshop Boys, Morrissey etc. Its got all the angst of The Smiths, the Jesus and Mary chain, Joy Division with that wonderful 80's sound. I love every song on it, tracks like Something I can Never Have proved Trent had something very special.

    5 - Year Zero - Flawed concept, but you cant argue with tracks like Vessell, My Violent Heart, In This Twilight, I think its like a more electronic than metal version of Broken, it does the same thing for me sometimes.

    6 - With Teeth - I hated this when it came out and was majorly disappointed but it has grown on me over the years, i like its production now, very low key, the only band sounding NIN album. Love The Collector and Sunspots. However it has some of the worst NIN material on it too like he was going through the motions. You Know What You are is the worst track he has ever written. It just felt like not much after The fragile and a 6 year wait was expecting more, but anticipation always lets you down. I like it for what it is now. I love the words about Addiction. Its an album about addiction and its taken me a while to get it. But i love some of it now.

    7-8 Ghost and The Slip. Both felt rushed, not a fan of either some moment on ghosts i love. But the slip left me cold.
    Im glad Trent is making another record and the slip was not the last one.
    Last edited by Highly Psychological; 12-05-2012 at 06:06 PM.

  26. #26
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Laughingstock of the World (America)
    Posts
    4,579
    Mentioned
    104 Post(s)
    1) All of them.
    2) Just about any other CD I own from any other artist.

  27. #27
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Detroit-ish Area Bacon Taste: Deliciously Maple
    Posts
    518
    Mentioned
    10 Post(s)
    i may give reasoning later, but im just listing right now for posterity

    The Fragile
    The Downward Spiral
    Year Zero
    With Teeth
    The Slip
    Ghosts
    Pretty Hate Machine
    Broken

  28. #28
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    born under punches
    Posts
    2,180
    Mentioned
    28 Post(s)
    1. The Downward Spiral
    2. Year Zero
    3. The Fragile
    4. Ghosts I-IV
    5. Pretty Hate Machine
    6. With Teeth
    7. The Slip
    8. Broken

    Haters gonna hate.

  29. #29
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Highland Park, IL
    Posts
    14,382
    Mentioned
    994 Post(s)
    1. The Downward Spiral
    2. The Downward Spiral
    3. The Downward Spiral
    4. The Downward Spiral
    5. Broken
    6. The Downward Spiral
    7. The Downward Spiral
    8. The Downward Spiral

  30. #30
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Posts
    479
    Mentioned
    0 Post(s)
    The Dragon Tattoo and Social Network soundtracks should be excluded from the list - this is a list to rank Nine Inch Nails, not Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Probably a small detail but they're really not the same things. Those soundtracks are part of his continued experiments in straying away from the Nails persona, so they shouldn't be lumped in with that persona.

    That being said, from the bottom on up: THE SLIP, while not terrible, is rather lackluster; the proof is in the pudding when it comes to this one, and I never listen to it, nor do I (hardly) ever have the desire to. (I did feel a slight curiosity to revisit Echoplex and Discipline today, oddly enough. I curbed it.) PRETTY HATE MACHINE has its moments (and the remaster sounds great), but it's very different from the kind of sound that he solidified in the 90s and there's only brief hints at the kind of brilliance he would later show. Head Like A Hole is still one of the meanest songs of his career though, and songs like Kinda I Want To showcase the dancier, funkier side of Nails. THE FRAGILE has its place here at the bottom half of my list because double albums are hard to pull off and I don't think he was quite able to; though beautiful and complex at every turn, this monster is rarely any fun to listen to. It sounds overblown and overcooked, and is an example of double albums that quickly ran out of ideas by the second disc (Complication, I'm Looking Forward..., Where Is Everybody?, The Marilyn Manson Song, Underneath It All). On the other hand, its moments are great - Somewhat Damaged has probably the best progression of any song I've heard from Nine Inch Nails or anyone else, Ripe (With Decay) is a haunting, unsettling and very memorable way to end an album of this magnitude, and Into the Void is amazing. GHOSTS I-IV is probably only above The Fragile because I've listened to it more, but while there's stuff that could be considered filler or fluff to many fans, I love the loose, experimental feel of the album and its refusal to be deliberate or calculated. It also came at a great time for me as a fan and in Reznor's hot streak back in 2007-08. An instrumental album is, I think, what all of us wanted at some point or another from him, and it was always unreasonable to expect all 36 tracks to be on par with A Warm Place. I love the strong undercurrent of piano (still probably his best expressive instrument), and how cerebral and elemental it can be. A great use of sound effects and samples, too, and who would've guessed he could pull of a straight-up banjo instrumental song without succumbing to ridiculousness? BROKEN is next; sometimes I think it's too short and other times I think it's just right. It's so volcanic, so furious and unhinged; he tempered most of that aggression with softer elements like piano or atmospheric synth, but this is the one album where he lets it all go without worrying about what anyone thinks, and it's great to listen to this when you're in that kind of mood. It's fun, cathartic, and incredibly rewarding, although only appropriate for certain moods. YEAR ZERO is next because for a late career move, it wasn't desperate or out of character - it was a brilliant change up, something that didn't sound like anything else out there (and still doesn't), and extremely dense and layered. The ARG was fun but ultimately went on too long, though at least you didn't have to follow it to appreciate the music, it just enriched it. I love how he gave in completely to his artificial computerized sound here; anything organic here is processed heavily until everything is cold, harsh, and mechanical. THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL is a close contender for first place mostly because I know I should choose it for first place, and with good reason: it's a masterpiece, every part of it necessary to the whole, each song building on its neighbors and constructing a journey and telling a story. It still sounds like it could've been released yesterday, and the more I listen to it the more I can hardly believe it was released in 1994; I have to wonder if anything released today is going to sound as relevant in 2026. Another perfect blend of aggression, despair, and vulnerability in equal measure, sometimes drowned in noise and sometimes deathly quiet, but mixed in such a way as to hear every bone-chilling detail in all its many layers. There are so many good songs here it's hard to pick and even harder to take out of context, though most people would point to Closer, the only Nails song most people remember these days - and yet, while being overplayed, Closer hasn't lost its charm or its bite, and is still a great testament to the Nine Inch Nails aesthetic. But the most important album to me was the one I came to first, and probably is one of the lesser liked albums... WITH TEETH. It will always be my favorite because it was my first. I love its simplicity: hard-hitting live drums, stadium-sized guitar riffs, epic piano chords, and minimal electronic touches to remind you that you're still listening to Nails. I love the lyrics: typically introspective, though in a more mature, world-weary, calmly accepting way that shed a new light on Reznor's music and personality, a perfect snapshot of who he was at the time. While some songs might not be very memorable by earlier standards (You Know What You Are?, The Collector, Love Is Not Enough), it all sounds great when played together in its proper sequence, and Reznor's ability to write catchy pop songs really crystallized here without sounding like a betrayal of his artistic integrity (The Hand That Feeds, Only). It has some kinkier moments, like the dark pulse of Sunspots or the propulsive grit of the title track, to keep things interesting. And it has, hands down, the most stone cold killer closing song of any album I've ever heard. Right Where It Belongs gives me chills every time - apart from being a good melody and a well-written song, he whispers "You keep looking, but you can't find the woods / While you're hiding in the trees" like a man coming to a sudden, bittersweet realization about his entire life, and when the crowd noises kick in they serve only to isolate him further into the ambiguity of his future. It's killer. I can listen to the whole album front to back in any place, at any time, while doing a million things at once or nothing at all, with the kind of complex love usually only reserved for an actual friend: unique to that specific album as opposed to any other album, always changing yet staying the same, constantly finding little idiosyncrasies that set it apart. It's the best.

    Whoosh, done. If you've read this far, you're cool.
    Last edited by carpenoctem; 12-11-2011 at 02:12 AM.

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions