Banned
Originally Posted by Indefinite_Cure
This is as random as it gets:
To me, my favourite album cover art of a Nine Inch Nails album is The Slip. Why, it may even be my all-time favourite album cover. It just feels so right and recognizable and brilliant and simple at the same time. I don't really know, I just really love it!
But what does it meannnnn?
Banned
It looks like The Presence has shrunk and is trying to stop Trent from falling over.
Josh Wink was on HLAH
Trent being pulled out of his past, the red bar with digital decay representing his mind is still full of the beep and boops of WT and YZ, and Ally's arm represents the live band taking him back to the roots of the live feel.
>still think The Slip is a partial concept album of the emotions and patterns felt during a live concert.
>>could also just be pretty
Quiet Member
Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor. Bill Cosby is Nine Inch Nails.
Banned
Now explain the artwork and the red line and ARG logo on Letting You etc and how it all makes sense!
•••••¤○●○¤•••••
My thoughts on the slip are that it is a somewhat concept album on the idea of what addicts call, you guessed it, the slip or relapse. It is a common theme with people in recovery that to be truly done, you need to slip. To either be sure or to say goodbye because it is like losing your best friend. Whether or not he really slipped doesnt matter. I tend to think of it as a metaphorical slip. He didnt want to slip in real life so he played it out in audio. The lyrics of 1,000,000 seem to be the triumphant return to that feeling that was lost. And the rest of the album is sort of spent deciding whether or not this is what he wants. It all ends with demon seed, the acknowledgement that he has this broken part inside of him that will never be fixed. But just knowing that is enough. It almost ends on a high note. Thats my take.
Or maybe they are just a group of songs that arent about that. I also like the album and the artwork. It was a return to the gritty harsh sounding NIN that i fell in love with.
Throbbing Member
This means The Presence is a NIN member. Year Zero has taken a new turn.
Quiet Member
And which instrument does he play?
Throbbing Member
I think that The Presence is more solely a hype man for nin. Being primarily a giant arm and hand The Presence is ideally suited for “raising the roof” during live performances, sometimes quite literally in venues with lower ceilings.
Active Member
The vuvuzela.
Quiet Member
Awesome! put some vuvuzela in that survivalism remix!
Quiet Member
2013: 'Ca Ca Ca Came Back Haunted!'
2015: 'Da Da Da Disappeared Jaded!'
Stubby Member
Ba Ba Ba Bait Post!
Throbbing Member
A long time ago I did a "World Cup 2010 Remix" of Pinion that added Vuvuzela to the song and put it on the NIN Remix site. I have no regrets.
Down, but not out.
I seem to end up visualizing and end up fantasizing about visiting London and Tokyo whenever I listen to The Fragile and Ghosts I-IV. Other Nine Inch Nails albums and songs have also done that to me in regards to those locations and other locations around the world that aren't New York City, but those two albums as a whole seem to have that kind of effect on me the most, especially when pertaining to those two specific locations whenever I think about Nine Inch Nails and traveling.
Ghosts I-IV also seems to be rather nice to listen to when relaxing with lots of coffee or tea around to drink as well.
Last edited by Halo Infinity; 08-05-2015 at 04:53 PM.
Quiet Member
Come on baby Trent, give us something NEW to chew on!!!!!!!
Active Member
We had all of The Fragile and With Teeth instrumentals like a month ago. We got three songs from The Fragile we have never heard in our lives and tons of alternate and different versions of other songs. There's a much higher quality version of Appendage available, something we've not been able to hear well in detail at all since it was relegated to cassette release. We've gotten new Gone Girl tracks and he's said there's what, three more we still haven't heard he's putting out? He's confirmed he's developing new music. Hesitation Marks apparently took at least a year to make. He's been busy with Apple Music which he's probably far less taken up with now, finished touring less than a year ago after a full year and a half or so of near ceaseless touring, he did an entire score for a two and a half hour film which is fantastic.
You might be saying, "That's not new NIN and I only like Nine Inch Nails not other things Trent does" as you so often love to, to which I have to say that it was four, nearly five years between The Slip and Hesitation Marks, and in that time period there was no touring for NIN whatsoever. It's not been that long at all since HM, and he was touring, recording another film score, and getting involved and helping develop a streaming service for one of the largest corporations on the face of the Earth. He has children and a wife who he probably really enjoys spending time with, and is apparently in the process of getting a new house considering his other one was listed on the market recently. The guy is a real, breathing man with a personal life and various different professional aspirations and drives.
What I recommend doing to help take up some of the wait time: get into reflecting in the chrome/NIN Live. Seriously. I have maybe a hundred different shows on my hard drive at this point. There's a massive amount of awesome, incredible live recordings with amazing variations from the studio editions, rehearsal audio, great rare songs and just fantastic stuff to find. You can hear and trace NIN going from Trent with a tape deck and guitar doing Purest Feeling material in a bar in New York in 1988 to being in a massive audio-visual amphitheatre band with some of the best touring musicians alive in late 2014. Check out Another Version of the Truth, an amazing fan project that put together the footage Trent gave out from LITS and put together a seemingly pro yet fan-compiled/edited DVD/blu ray. There's TDS: Live edit. There's that kickass Australia blu ray someone put together this past year, and amazing various fan edits of NIN live from its entire career available online easily and free. There's the entire fan remix side of things which has some of the best things you will ever hear available for free. @Reaps has made some stellar stuff, as has @halo33, and it was actually a lot of their work appearing on last.fm that helped me dig into NIN when I was way younger. You'll hear versions of songs that almost ruin the studio versions for you.
And remember that if Trent takes longer to make something chances are you'll be getting a more polished, thought out project. Would you want a rushed version of The Fragile? That took apparently two years in studio and was a massive gap between TDS and TF. With Teeth would be completely different if it was made just after AATCHB. Year Zero even wasn't out until two years after WT.
Give the dude a break, be grateful for all the amazing content available, stop repeating how annoyed you are that Trent isn't doing what you want him to do all the time. Nine Inch Nails may be Trent Reznor but Trent Reznor is not Nine Inch Nails.
Last edited by implanted_microchip; 08-07-2015 at 09:19 AM.
Josh Wink was on HLAH
Active Member
Active Member
Josh Wink was on HLAH
I don't like the internet anymore
Banned
I love how the audio is actually from a real show where Trent completely fucked the lyrics to Even Deeper haha
Active Member
That glitchy effect at the end of "finally free, and you could be" on The Wretched is one of my favorite little moments of weird electronic/distortion based sound in NIN. Just works so well, has this sort of haunting, intense effect like his own thoughts are just getting eaten alive by noise. Combined with the waving synths and the fuzzed out, distorted guitars that seem to pulsate this whole song is just like getting bathed in distortion. Love it. Everything just tearing apart at the seems.
Active Member
So, uh, I got carried away and wrote a long thing on The Fragile just now:
I find the second half of The Fragile to deal heavily with entering into this world you’ve been running from. At the start of the album on Somewhat Damaged, there is this very clearly broken person who has been left by someone, whether that be romantic or simply a close intimate friend or relative, and lost them when they needed them the most. They seek out a surrogate to fulfill that role, look for some sense of comfort and it’s unhealthy because it’s born out of a need to run from reality, or at least what they see reality as. But that’s not going to ultimately work, because “you can try to stop it but it keeps on coming.” (I love how Trent’s vocals get cut off at the end of The Wretched when he’s screaming “you can try to stop it but it—“ it’s such a great effect and simple yet works every listen.)You have We’re In This Together and The Fragile both dealing with this sense of saving someone else or joining with someone else and yet it’s this desperate, “We need this because I need this, I have to do this for myself, I need to save someone from my own fate” attitude. It’s very flawed.
Then on Even Deeper you have this dream of perfection, where for once in their life they feel complete, but they still want to ruin it. They see reality as this ruined, mangled thing, and where they started out that’s exactly what it was, yet here they are dreaming of this perfect world and still wanting to tear it down to where they are now. I think that really reflects how a lot of people who are depressives or going through a depressive episode feel, this sense of “Everything has been horrible before so any sense of perfection or happiness is a lie, I’ve lost things so anything gained is future pain, fuck it all, let’s get back to the bottom because it’s where we’re inevitably going to end up anyways.” You have this person realizing that their sense of perfection or comfort isn’t going to last, is imperfect and set to fail, and so they end up submerging into that dark space they’ve run from and tried to hide from. They built a wall where they could keep the ominous them on the other side, but they kept picking, and maybe this person picked a little bit too.
Everything changes after Even Deeper. The songs that express a sense of hope and opportunity for more are done. The next song is Pilgrimage, and in my mind that pilgrimage is willingly marching into that dark space they’ve been trying to hide from. There’s angry chanting and shouting like some overthrow or takeover, this ominous vibe of something horrible taking over. Then there’s No You Don’t, a song just loaded with venom. It’s the most outwardly fast-paced, aggressive and moving song on the album by this point, “You think you have everything, but no, you don’t.” After songs where for once in your life you feel complete and being a king with a queen, not letting someone fall apart, it’s pretty clear that that’s over. And maybe it’s all been a lie, a delusion to hide from the truth: that things are hopeless, that you’re still somewhat damaged, that there’s poison to your rotten core. If off the side, high and back and far away is a place where you hide and where you stay, then this is the point where you leave that place. You’re not going to crawl away from this anymore.
Trent expresses this sort of sense of false reality to mask the uglier truth and the realization of it being a construct a lot, especially on With Teeth. “I just made you up to hurt myself,” “We cover ourselves with lies, but underneath we’re not so tough, and love is not enough.” There’s this running sense of this comforting delusion that is going to end and won’t last. It’s all fragile and is bound to shatter and break in two. We’re In This Together even explicitly says as much, really: “If the world should break in two, until the very end of me, until the very end of you.” A lot of people with depression and other issues will often enter these states of seeing things as all this very specific, very horrible way, and in their mind it’s not their disease or disorder talking, it’s just them finally opening their eyes. Even if things actually were okay, in their mind they never could have been. That’s a line of thought that I think The Fragile is really built around. Here’s this person giving in to this very hostile, negative world view, where everything covers you in cuts and scratches.
The Left side ends with this almost declaration of claiming your place in this dark, hopeless and bleak world: “I descend from grace, In arms of undertow, I will take my place, In the great below.” This is where they feel they belong, this is the place made for them and they’ll inhabit it. If Left is searching for hope to avoid the broken place you’re in, and losing it, then Right is completely sinking into that world and inhabiting it, owning it and letting it entirely consume you. The Way Out Is Through practically feels like you’re caught in waves, flowing, moving, tumbling and rolling, all the while clinging to this concept of perseverance, this mantra that you’re not going to stop. On The Downward Spiral the protagonist commits suicide to escape the world they’ve found themselves sinking in. The Fragile is like what would happen if you didn’t give up, and instead went on in that headspace. There’s an invitation of darkness, a total romance and acceptance of negativity after that fight against it is lost. To quote The New Flesh, “Give it to me, I can take it.” There’s a sick delight in it. If this is all you’re really seeing in life, if this is what you perceive the world to be, then you might as well embrace it. “Tear it all down, tear it all down, tear it all down, tear it all down,” Trent chants on 10 Miles High, layers of vocals on top of one another, one sounding almost bored, disinterested, like they’re going through the motions in this pattern of self-destruction. You’re running through a cycle you’ve been through before, and as he sighs on The New Flesh, “This is how it all begins.” This is nothing new. A lot of critics bashed the album lyrically for seeming to stay in the same negative space as previous NIN material, yet that’s so clearly a focus: this shit is not stopping, and it’s exhausting, and I’m tired. “And it keeps repeating, never ever leave me; never be enough to fill me up.”
Into the Void is this clear admittance of just failing at saving yourself, almost an angry acceptance. Please has a line that I love and think really helps illustrate the whole sort of flow of the Right side of things: “All my life, yeah, yeah yeah yeah but it just left me dead, The world is over and I realize it was all in my head.” Along with “Now, everything is clear, I erase the fear,” it really fits with that whole idea of having this sense of “Oh, I’ve not been happy, I’ve just been blind, here is what the world really looks like. I finally see everything for what it really is.” (A lot like on TDS with “You know I can see what you really are” and “He sewed his eyes shut, because he is afraid to see.” Even on PHM there’s “Wrap my eyes in bandages, confessions I see through.” A lot of Trent’s lyrics seem to deal with uncovering your eyes and seeing the “truth” of things, even when that truth is maybe its own biased twisting of events.) If now you’re suddenly “seeing through the bullshit” so to speak and seeing how clearly corrupted, dark and miserable everything is, then Starfuckers is levelling that at those in your line of sight. For Trent those people would all be in show business, so you get this perception that everyone is just another narcissist, everyone is just self-serving and looking for their own fame.
Complication is a really odd song, it’s instrumental and short, features muffled, melodic screaming, a very propelling guitar line, and then completely fizzles out. And the way I see it is, all of this near-high energy that’s been gained through this dark acceptance and embrace of depression, addiction and negativity is finally coming down. There’s an almost manic high on Right, this sort of sick enjoyment, a real diseased energy that clearly cannot last. Please feels like that a lot. If there’s this manic high of reveling in your own defeat then Complication is that high spiraling out of control. It peaks completely and then dissolves, and you’re left facing your loss and real grief.
I’m Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally is one of the most knowingly personal songs Trent’s written. If TDTWWA is being at his grandmother’s funeral, this is facing that loss afterward when time has passed and he’s realized just how hard it’s hit him. The way the title is written is really important in my mind, that comma makes it feel almost like a breath of relief, saying oh, finally, I can give in and join you now. Now you’re facing your actual grief after masking it and trying to run from it by having this weird, manic period of destruction, and you’re realizing that all you’ve done escape that broken place you’re found in on Somewhat Damaged has failed. “There is no place I can go, there is no way I can hide, it feels like it keeps coming from the inside.” Trent sings and writes a lot about things being on the inside, and it’s really clear how much he’s speaking about his inner demons, addictions, depression, what have you. There’s a lot of NIN songs where the “you” is clearly himself and I’ve written before about believing that he commonly personifies his self-destructive side as a separate sort of voice, most evidenced on TDS with the machine side of the protagonist and the inner dialogue on I Do Not Want This. The Big Come Down is absolutely addressing yourself, that sort of “Hey, look, this is what we asked for, this what we strove for, to break apart completely, and here we fucking are. Don’t you like it? Isn’t it really what you want now?”
Underneath It All is a favorite of mine despite being disregarded a lot. It’s short, it’s the second to last song of a really lengthy album, it’s almost monotonous and easy to dismiss. But as the last song with vocals I think it says a lot and is really important to wrapping up the key themes of the album. It’s like a retrospective on all the behavior that came before it. After all that’s been attempted and done, after all the self-destruction and anger, substance abuse, self-medicating, clinging to empty hopes, the grief of someone you’ve lost is still there. “You remain, I am stained” are the last words spoken on the album (specifically spoken, too, rather than sang, as the distorted, haunting choir of Trent’s falsetto “All I can do, I can still feel you” completely tears at the seams in glitch and distortion beneath it). This has all been futile. You’re left Ripe (With Decay). It’s such an amazing exploration of what it is to run into delusion and end up stuck facing the reality you tried to escape from. I see this album as the one where Trent fully accepted his demons and his issues, and everything from then on has been approaching them with a sense of acceptance. Every album previous dealt with trying to pretend they weren’t there, hiding or masking them, running from them, and then With Teeth is an absolute acceptance of them. It’s a really amazing way of seeing someone grow and mature into accepting their issues and then going from there, eventually getting to the place where you deal with them, after having been fleeing from them and behaving as if they weren’t there. It’s really powerful.
Something kind of random I love about The Fragile is the mantra-esque quality of so much of the lyrics. Most songs seem to have core repeated lines. “All I’ve undergone, I will keep on.” “All I do, I can still feel you.” “I won’t let you fall apart.” “Now you know this is what it feels like.” Of course “nothing can stop me now” makes another appearance in a song both about transcendence and suicide. “Never be enough to fill me up,” “Tear it all down,” just these soft whispered mantras of comfort and these dark angry declarations of hate or intended self-destruction. Oh and also something else I find very cool is that The Frail is such a testing ground and almost summary of what happens on this record: there’s this gorgeous, sad sounding piano that’s this oddly comforting sad space that gets consumed and beaten down by this massive, dark, foreboding keyboard that then smashes and takes over, cutting it off and leading right into the next track. Isn’t that in a way what happens thematically? Goddamn I love this album.
Last edited by implanted_microchip; 08-08-2015 at 06:25 PM.
bastard from blue city
The lyric is actually "tear it all down." I don't think that changes your point, though.
I like that your mini-essay meanders as much as the album.
And I especially dig your point about the mantras. The Fragile is an exploration of loss. Mantras are such a go-to tool when we have to 'fake it 'til we make it.' And a hell of a lot of songs on TF are about faking, covering up, forgetting, or ignoring the loss.
So, a thing to add: What is this "big" comedown from, exactly?
It seems like the most likely candidate is whatever got the narrator "10 Miles High." But with that song missing, it changes not only what TBCD is about, but also the songs in between – one can see why both 10MH and "The New Flesh" have to be present together (or neither at all), since TNF seems to take place almost entirely in a drugged haze. So "Please," "Starfuckers" and "Complication" would all be happening in the haze as well. That obviously adds to how exaggerated SF and Comp are: this big 'rockstar, fuck you' expression seems to come out of nowhere without the setup by 10MH, so without it, no wonder so many people say SF doesn't fit the album.
Active Member
^^^is the big come down talking about the come down from being on the downward spiral tour and all the fame and excess that came with that to trying to return to 'real life'?
Throbbing Member
I'm amazed that I've never known about Carre Callaway's existence and TR back story until reading stuff about her band Queen Kwong on here yesterday. If you don't have time for the video: TR was/is a mentor to her over the years, a brotherly figure, nothing romantic. Someone randomly brought her into the studio in WT era and it went from there. All the years of daily NIN obsession/consumption (that many of you have behind you too), taking in interviews, learning about people he's been associated with, etc. Maybe I've seen her name back in WT times and never followed up on her, but fuck. Buttfuck.
3m55s for NIN relationship:
Last edited by blassster; 08-09-2015 at 01:20 PM.
Active Member
I don't understand. I only watched 3 minutes (from 3:55) but it just seems like someone talking about their friend. Does it get weird or something later on?
Sorry, I'm in a rush so can't sit through the whole thing
God is an American
No, TR was (still is) a mentor to her and she opened for NIN back in 2005 as a very green solo performer. Queen Kwong rules!
Bent Member
She also opened at the Palladium in 2009
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