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Faceplams: It's a thread to express your opinion AND mine. Not sure why people assume it's some sort of safe space where people can't challenge your opinion.Originally Posted by Sutekh
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It's a thread to express your opinion AND mine. Not sure why people assume it's some sort of safe space where people can't challenge your opinion.
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mate... I didn't say you should not air your opinion
in fact I would prefer that you go further with expressing your opinion - I would prefer to hear why you think they were successful or how you think the impact of these videos changed the art form. Just saying "you are wrong to say that" in a slightly grumpy way just makes it look like you can't cope with people affectionately criticising things you like.
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i would include...
Trent's outfit aside, this video upped the ante for a performance video. It's impact at the time was huge. Mainstream audiences hadn't seen anything like this before, and helped cement the danger & mystery around NIN at the time much more than anything off PHM did.
Last edited by bobbie solo; 11-14-2018 at 09:48 AM.
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I guess I'm having difficulty seeing it out of context... it looks like a glossy, studio version of that 89/90 ministry live VHS to me
But, I suppose that in of itself was a step forward. Certainly the form of the broken movie deserves credit, but it's influence is sadly diminished by the fact that very few had the guts to follow in it's footsteps (I'm only saying very few because I imagine some exist - I couldn't name any)
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Less Than is the worst NIN video.
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re: Ministry...that's why I wrote mainstream.
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Ah sorry, yep.
This is almost another thread-worthy tbh, but it would be interesting to analyse the impact of NIN... like I said earlier, they're my favourite rock band, but I never thought of them as an evolutionary leap forward with attendant mainstream impact like the beatles, Zeppelin, pistols et al. I think probably because the mainstream wasn't beset by a million easy to spot NIN clones. But it's worth consideration
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The live version of 1,000,000 where Robin doesn’t play guitar is awful and should never be performed ever again under any circumstance.
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That HLAH video is worth it just for that mindfuck of a head turning and the people dancing and turning their stick alternating each frame by frame. This is wonderful and actually fits both the lyrics, the samples used, and the music.
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I cant stand the mixing on the trilogy, I don't care if it had a purpose, i still think its horrible.
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I’ve never gotten over the fact that the video is too similar to The Scorpions “Rock You Like a Hurricane” vid.
Wish is is an awesome song though. Hope he’ll never take it out of the live rotation.
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They were successful because they were made as a piece of artistic expression first and as an advertisement for a record second. Most bands are fine with a generic video made by a generic director. Trent actually went out of his way to hire people who had an interesting style or point of view and who would make something that would stick in people's minds. The amount of detail and work that went into a lot of the videos that have come out is fantastic. Like them or not, they're anything but generic.
How would you fix it?
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Stop abusing the compression, less on the bass, quit limiting it to hell when in clips because what's the point in having dynamics if its all blasting at the same volume? That's what made TDS great. I was getting a headache from listening to THIS ISNT THE FUCKING PLACE because of how fucking compressed it was....fucking hell
Memb, Member, The Membest
That's how people hear in their fifties, it's nature, it's terrible but it's human - we grow, we age, we turn into dirt... oh sorry where were we? Head like a hole is not a great video and is not the best song even among its neighbours on the first album.
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Generally I agree with this sentiment, but there are exceptions, such as shoegazing music, noise rock, etc. NIN in general has always been pretty compressed post-Broken, but they're nowhere close to as bad as it gets. I can't listen to Rick Rubin's post millennium work because of how compressed it is. All that said, I think that this trilogy was mixed the way it was on purpose. A lot of the strangeness of the mix isn't actually limiting, it's just strange decisions in the mixing and EQing . The whole thing has a really muddy sound, but it's obviously intentional. The only track that's limited significantly more than most NIN tracks is Less Than, but it still seems intentional. It does take some getting used to though. The whole trilogy sort of reminds me of the bizarre mixing decisions that The Magnetic Fields albums have, which also takes some getting used to.
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I don't have a problem with it when it fits the vibe. Songs like Big Man With a Gun or Broken are meant to sound like that and I'm okay when it fits the mood. But when its a song like AATCHB or This Isn't The Place or The Lovers....no fuck that. I've made some abrasive music that has more breathing room, hell Broken is less compressed then the entire Trilogy.
Also, there is a lot of Limiting on the Trilogy if you look at the wave files. If you zoom in all the way, you can see the volume is maxed out, expect that Trent put like a 0.01 percent limit on it so it BARELY doesn't clip with some exceptions like She's Gone Away and Not Anymore
Throbbing Member
I'm not saying that it isn't overly limited, just that it's not significantly more than most NIN albums. They've had this problem for most of their discography, so I doubt the sound of the trilogy that bothers you is strictly limiting. And Broken is actually the one of the quietest NIN album, digitally speaking, less compressed than any album since the 90s. All I'm saying is that I think it's the overall mix you don't like, not one specific problem.
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I don't mind the mix on the trilogy. I'm also quite fond of Fixed... so...
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Mix =/= Mastering.
The mix is mostly good. It's quite dense; there's a lot happening beneath the surface of many tracks, which makes repeat listens even more enjoyable. Only thing I'd want is for the vocals on Ahead Of Ourselves to be a little louder.
The amount of compression on the master is a tad too much. This probably explains why it took me so long to get into Burning Bright. It's almost impenetrable to the point of being fatiguing (but I feel that's the point).
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yeah i think thats what i meant, the mastering. The mix is pretty good, but the mastering is pretty bad, i dont care, like i said, if it has a reason for sounding bad
i'm too thin
I fucking love David Fincher and would probably rank him as my #1 director. I don't love everything he does but the stuff I love I love - e.g. I'd say Mindhunter is probably my favorite Netflix original owing to how much it retains that Fincher tone, tension, and all around feel. The Social Network might be my favorite film of the 2010's. I know who Fincher is and I know he directed the Only video. I only really love the song. WT is the first album I listened to obsessively when I started getting into NIN in high school and all those tracks hold a special place in my heart.
With that being said, let's not pretend he hasn't had a few 'uh...'[1] moments in his career. I'd consider the Only video to be a big one of those. It watches like it was meant to be some cutting edge CGI proof-of-concept and, as is always the case with things of such a nature (and most things from the early to mid-2000s in general), looked immediately terrible and dated 5 minutes after release. As if the shit CGI wasn't enough, they made sure to throw in a Macbook Pro which is a surefire way to immediately date anything you make. The video is a product of its time and its time was embarrassing.
I genuinely wasn't sure what kind of response I'd get about this but I gotta say I'm surprised as heck that there seems to be nearly universal support for that video lol.
(P.S. I've never watched anything by Lynch and I don't think the CBH video is half bad. I'd trade 100 Onlies for 1 CBH. Easily the worst NIN video.)
Last edited by Harry Seaward; 11-15-2018 at 03:48 PM. Reason: [1]: https://youtu.be/rOT24fOKKig - Removed link because it won't stop fucking auto-embedding.
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If we're talking about videos that are dated, then we REALLY need to start here:
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Only (heh) part of your post I fully agree with. What were they thinking with those photos?
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Oh and i still can't stand Complication
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Really? I like that song! It's certainly not one of the best instrumentals on The Fragile, but how could it compare to the likes of Just Like You Imagined, The Mark Has Been Made, and Ripe (With Decay)? Do you like Complications of the Flesh at all?
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Nope and i also think JLYI is overrated
Stubby Member
The Fragile Deviations is better than The Fragile...
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Why am I not surprised?
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Note that i didn't say it was a bad song, I dont think that at all. I think its a great song....but I really don't see, imo what its so special about it. To me, I always thought Ripe was better, The Mark Has Been Made was better, The frail was better, La Mer was better, it sure is a lot better then Complication.
I think someone mentioned how i could hate complication when it was so short...well, to answer whoever said that, let me give out a list of songs around the same time or are shorter than I think are better then Complication
Pinion
The silence in between Gave Up and Physical
the last track from the HLAH single
Underneath It All
The Frail
Help Me I Am In Hell
March Of The Pigs
Big Man With A Gun
Adrift and at Piece
Gone, still
HYPERPOWER!
The Begining of the End
1 Ghost I
999,999
The Eater of Dreams
Black Noise
Braches/Bones
Now I'm Nothing
Keep in mind that Complication is the only main song i have such a strong dislike of, I'm not even sure why really, something about it bugs me...that whole BUWUAWUAUWUWAUMWA synth riff just pisses me off for no reason, something about it makes me think "god this sound so 1999"...
sure it adds new stuff on top of it...but it doesn't really do much since the layer that gets added on top doesn't really change much, the drums hardly change, that BUWUAWUAUWAUW riff never changes, that guitar riff from the start never changes its just so fucking repetitive and fucking annoying, in my opinion.
I dont have a problem with any of you guys liking it, hell, by all means, enjoy it! more power to you!
I will say one good thing about it though, i like the melody it plays before going to either I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally or The New Flesh (both of which are in my top 10 fave nin songs). If it sounded something like that, i probably would have liked it more.
Speaking of fragile era stuff i don't like, that Porters remix of TDTWWA is god awful.
Let's take thing song about Trent's inner turmoil of accepting the loss of his grandmother and put this thumping beat behind it for 7 mins with Trents voice sounding like its coming out of a damn well and not much else....and we call it a day. No thanks, I'd rather listen to the Pirate version of Eraser or one of the Paulstreched versions of Eraser or one of the other versions of Mr. Self Destruct that sound like minor variations of the song. Hell, i'd even listen to the Starfucker remix's, at least they were different and sorta interesting.
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Not sure how you can think it's great and also not see what's so special about it, but okay...
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