It's just annoying because I'll get people asking me if I think it's cool because they know NIN is my favorite band and I don't give a shit about rap or pop music or the MCU.
It's just annoying because I'll get people asking me if I think it's cool because they know NIN is my favorite band and I don't give a shit about rap or pop music or the MCU.
how's this for an "attitude adjusted" concept: Trent & Atticus under pseudonyms become svengali pop producers & subvert the whole fucking thing. I'm pretty sure Miley would be game & there's a couple of others that have that potential. Seriously, I would like to hear a studio record with last year's touring band all involved in a capacity larger than a cameo appearance. Man(woman) for man, I don't think there are any bands out there that can touch that lineup. It would be interesting to hear what came of it.
If it's real songs and not glorified parodies, i could go for that. The Black Mirror tracks do nothing for me. I'd enjoy them a lot more with all of the correct, original lyrics.
Why in fuck did they cut the key oard riff from Kinda I want to? The demo is so much better, it's maddening
Dead Souls is so different from everything else in NIN's discography, yet it fits perfectly alongside the songs on The Crow soundtrack. I almost wonder if TR was commissioned to produce it the way he did.
Never seen a better looking NIN release in my life:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CD-Nine-Inc...AAAOSwFjNZfoye
I saw them do it twice in 2016 & it was phenomenal. Listening to tapes from this year & it just keeps getting better. Reeves Gabrels has been absolutely blazing on it. Funny, a lot of the hard core Cure heads don't care for it. Not really sure why. No accounting for taste!
Still blown away how good The Slip is. Really loud and angry, noisy, heavy and raw. I always found it fascinating how it's basically the exact opposite of Hesitation Marks
See, I think he IS afraid. Bowie did WHATEVER the fuck he wanted, constantly changing genres. I feel like Trent kind of tested the waters, with HM, and, particularly, Everything, and he felt the backlash and didn't like it.
And I think that might be a BIT of what led to the "return to form" of NTAE. Don't get me wrong: I fucking LOVED the trilogy.
But, I can't help thinking that the man feels pigeonholed.
I felt that much of the Trilogy, especially NTAE, was in a way, a kind of resignation to the fact that he has to go back to old versions of himself in order to satisfy the fans. Take The Lovers, which came from a place he never wanted to revisit. He doesn't even perform most of the song live at all; it's just pre-recorded.
The first verse of Burning Bright exemplifies this.
I'm going back
Of course I am
As if I ever had a choice
Back to what I always knew I was
On the inside
Back to what I really am
Look at this pathetic place I made
With little bits of sticks and hair
And anything I found along the way
There's clearly more going on here than just that. This is just one interpretation.
Personally, I don't think it's a resignation at all. If anything, I think the trilogy represents Trent & Atticus embracing the past and using it in a way that's different from previous albums. It's the idea that, in order to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been. I don't see the trilogy as some exasperated sigh that's about giving the fans what they want. It's too complex and strange for that, especially Bad Witch. I think it's about sorting through the past and seeing what you dig up that you may have forgotten. Trent mentioned in a few interviews how they used some guitars and other items that hadn't been used in a while, and how he brought back the saxophone that had been collecting dust up to that point just on a whim. I'm sure it took some courage to use those instruments again and to use previous material as a reference point without feeling like they were just repeating what had already been done.
I think it's more an expression of his fear of going back to who he was, and how others feel he HAS to go back to being some sort of death rocker (i.e. "Nine Inch Nails was so much better when Trent was on drugs.") in order to create anything of worth again. I'm sure that sort of thing weighs heavy on his mind at times. But yeah, I don't really see it as an admission of giving in to that pressure.
And, i'm not saying that this whole thing was an "exasperated sigh," as you said, but, like you also said, "i'm sure that sort of thing weighs heavy on his mind at times."
That's more along the lines of what i was saying. I DO think he might feel as though he has to, at times, take care not to "color too far outside the lines."
I don't think it means that the trilogy is, like, phony, or anything like that.
But the vitriol from Everything HAD to hurt a bit- i WILL say that much.
Fearfulness didn't lead him to backing away from the direction Hesitation Marks took - in my opinion, fear led to the direction Hesitation Marks took in the first place, fear of being trapped in an echo-chamber and not being able to reach an audience outside of his established cult. A lot of the moves made in that period (signing with Columbia, performing on Jimmy Kimmel, the Blu-Ray that never materialized) speak to someone trying to break out and achieve a visibility he felt he was lacking at that stage in his career. Even if you want to argue that Everything as a song was a bold "this is something really different" creative statement, the fact he backed off of that song so quickly and never even played it live (we know for sure it was rehearsed) betrays the fearfulness, the concern with perception, that defined that period. He believed in Hesitation Marks creatively, sure, but there was a real hunger there to be recognized and relevant in a mainstream sense again.
Compare that to the Trilogy era. One low key music video but overall almost no press or major push for the releases to be noticed. The major tour that closed the cycle was a diehard affair, with more deep cuts and rarities and premieres than we could believe. As opposed to trying to reach beyond his established audience, as he did with Hesitation Marks, he seemed to realize that thinking too much about what people would respond to was diluting his artistic output and went the opposite direction, full "this is what I'm excited about and I really don't give a shit what people think." And yes, it is what he and Atticus thought was interesting, not what they thought his fanbase would eat up the most (I don't know how you could listen to Bad Witch and think it was curated by design to appeal to the fans).
Hesitation Marks saw him depressed at having limits to his audience. The Trilogy cycle saw him not pandering to his loyal following, but appreciating it and the security it affords him and Atticus, to worry first and foremost about the creative and not the commercial. Cold And Black And Infinite made that gratitude abundantly clear.
Ah. @Deacon Blackfire , this is a very interesting counterargument.
It was today when I found out there's a marimba part in "Discipline".