That's hilarious, it was considered Trent's album when he lost it and now these fans see it as the "last good album", let's wait like a few more years when Year Zero will get that claim by these type of fans.
I can confirm this is the case of them saying With_Teeth being the last good record, I adore With_Teeth but it is quite humorous.
I don't know what fans you guys are talking about - so they still come to these boards even though they supposedly didn't like anything after With Teeth which was released 15 years ago? Personally Hesitation Marks was the last album that had songs on it that I really got into and could enjoy after repeated listens. NIN hasn't released anything since then that blew me away like hearing "Copy of A" for the first time when it was streamed live and Trent walked out on stage and started playing his keyboard and then the rest of the band started to join him and it got more and more intense - that was special and Came Back Haunted sounded very new and fresh to me when it was released. Nothing on the EPs did that for me. I didn't mind The Idea of You - but I thought it just sounded oddly like something off With Teeth or Year Zero (and I found out this year that The Idea of You is a leftover from With Teeth). Less Than was the first NIN single that I thought was pretty weak and didn't like. Shit Mirror and Ahead of Ourselves were alright but not something I'd want to listen to all the time. And now the latest Ghosts releases don't have anything I find enjoyable to listen to at all.
I bought the Quake CD ROM back in 1996 when I was scouring every music store for Halos and NIN bootlegs and the only thing I liked on there was the theme song. I didn't get any enjoyment from listening to the other tracks on there - they were just background noise for a video game to me, just like film scores are background noise for films, nothing that I'd want to listen to without something visual to watch. I met some Star Wars fans that drive around in their cars listening to the John Williams Star Wars film scores - I'm a huge Star Wars fan and collect a lot of Star Wars stuff and the scores are great when you are watching the movies but I would never in a million years drive around in my car listening to a fucking Star Wars film score.
I did buy the first couple of TR/AR film scores when they still had rock and roll type instrumentals on them and I was quite proud of Trent for getting into film work, but they all started to sound the same to me as they began churning them out. I was quite worried that Trent was going to run out of new sounds to make and cool riffs for Nine Inch Nails. His albums used to sound fresh and you wondered "how did he make that sound?" Oh well, maybe the next NIN release will be back on track or they'll go jazz or country, but please, anything but ambient film scores...keep that released under TR/AR so I don't get my hopes up and can ignore it if it sounds like the past 10-11 scores, there is quite enough ambient work released as TR/AR.
Last edited by fishtifer; 04-09-2020 at 10:51 PM.
Also another thing to support this is the official Spotify playlist from NIN which has the three records in their order, which is another hint of how they'd prefer you to listen to them.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5L...u9WZATkSO6avKR
They've been also speculating before Bad Witch release to re-release all of them as one release with small possible changes, I would still love to see this, but we will have to see!
Either way, there is a reason why it may feel weird to listen to Add Violence alone without NTAE before it and Bad Witch after it.
The way Trent explained it, is that The Trilogy are albums seperated into three arcs. You know how Downward Spiral pretty much has three arcs to it as well? I think it goes like this
I arc
"Mr Self Destruct"
"Piggy"
"Heresy"
"March Of The Pigs"
"Closer"
II arc
"Ruiner"
"The Becoming"
"I Do Not Want This
"Big Man With A Gun"
III final arc
"A Warm Place"
"Eraser
"Reptile"
"The Downward Spiral"
"Hurt"
The Trilogy is on album with each arc having its own record! They do indeed float into one another really well!
Last edited by HWB; 04-10-2020 at 03:29 AM.
Agreed on this - someone earlier in this thread lumped Watchmen in with the other scores and I’m ‘no’, Watchmen is really different. There’s a great interview with Damon Lindelof here where he talks about the score at about 13 mins in. I honestly think there may be at least an Emmy nomination for this. Saying that Watchmen is an ambient droney score and like all the others (which I also think is wrong), isn’t just a subjective opinion, it’s objectively wrong
Last edited by WorzelG; 04-10-2020 at 04:42 AM.
Yep. They may not be the majority, but they exist.
That still hasn't been confirmed.I didn't mind The Idea of You - but I thought it just sounded oddly like something off With Teeth or Year Zero (and I found out this year that The Idea of You is a leftover from With Teeth).
As for the instrumental/ambient side of Nine Inch Nails? That's always been a part of Trent (and now Atticus)'s music. It's nothing new, it's just that now they have the freedom to explore it as much as possible because they don't have to appeal to a record label or MTV. In my opinion, ever since Trent & Atticus did The Social Network score, they've had this creative flow of energy that's pretty exciting to witness. Between Nine Inch Nails, How To Destroy Angels, film scores, and various other projects, they've been on a creative roll, and I think that's really cool. Does everything they put out appeal to everyone? Fuck no, but Nine Inch Nails was never about that either. I mean, consider how many fans dropped off after The Fragile came out because it wasn't The Downward Spiral. Is it any different now? You don't have to get it for it to be just as valid as what they put out before. That's what's kind of annoying about this snobby, dismissive attitude that some fans have towards their film scores and ambient music. It's this idea that it's somehow beneath Trent & Atticus to create that kind of music, as if everything they make should go hard or go home.
I don't know. Maybe it's just because I listen to a lot of different genres, but I can appreciate both sides of the same coin. I don't feel like I have to settle for something like Ghosts because it feels just as vital in its intent as those other, harder albums.
Last edited by BRoswell; 04-10-2020 at 07:56 AM.
Thanks for the suggestion - I did check out the Watchmen soundtracks and I even saved a good 10 or so songs that I liked but after a couple of listens it wasn't something I wanted to listen to very often. It's been a month or two now, I'll have to give them another spin. I collect the tracks I like from all these film scores into one "Best of TR/AR" playlist but I didn't find anything on Waves or Together and Locusts to add. Watchmen didn't fit it and has it's own playlist.
I have long championed Hesitation Marks on these forums. People dunk on that album because it's Trent actually doing something new with the NIN sonic palette instead of making With Even More Teeth or The Slip Again. Remember when The Slip came out and all those people bitched about how it "didn't flow" and couldn't figure out if it wanted to be industrial dance-rock NIN or ambient? I'm sure Trent brooded over such things and just couldn't decide during that massive 8-day creation process he spent on that album, or whatever it was..
I'm glad he went in the direction he did with Hes Marks and made this super-weird, understated but multi-layered chillwave NIN album that people listened to one time and decided was trash. Had they stuck around and let it sink in some, they'd realize it's basically the album Massive Attack has failed to follow up Mezzanine with for the better part of 25 years now..
Trent was definitely in a more subdued headspace in 2013; that's why Hes Marks and Welcome Oblivion sound like sibling albums. Hes Marks has great stuff on it, especially with good headphones. Check your iPhone equalizer or your turntable rig if it sounds like ass to you. Copy of A, Hau-Hau-Haunted, Find My Way, All Time Low, While I'm Still Here, Various Methods of Escape...it's just one grooving banger after another on that album. The gospel singers on the tour were a little much for my taste in NIN, but the songs sounded great live. Guess you had to have been there..
Whats strange to me is how HM shines on the production side with all that pulsating synth stuff and Pino basslines, but is a bit stale in terms of arrangement and plays it safe to often on how your typical NIN song is structured. It feels a bit like WT with how the styles are all over the place and sports some fat that should have better been trimmed (the intro or the last 23 minutes of Came Back Haunted). What's really bothering me though is how I'm not able to buy into the stuff TRs singing about - the whole narrative he made up about him in the TDS days and whatnot. It kinda seems like he ran out of things to say at that point.
I feel the same way. That album hit me harder than anything since The Fragile. I don't really dig "Running" and "Everyday" but the rest of that album is gold to me. The sounds and approach on most of those songs are what I wanted (and selfishly expected) from NIN. The end of CBH is unnecessary and goofy with the vocals/lyrics but the musical buildup and layers are amazing. I like the trilogy and I love some of those songs (She's Gone Away, The Background World, Less Than) equally as much as my favorite HM material but the trilogy is pulling more from a wider scope and theme.
I also feel the same about Welcome to Oblivion and HTDA in general. That shit is what I wanted since The Fragile. I fucking love HTDA.
How can you say the styles are all over the place and yet say it ‘plays it safe’ that doesn’t compute? Also is a 50sec intro really that bothersome to you?
but about the having stuff to say. Yes I agree but it’s probably because he got the itch to tour like he says and NIN have never toured on old material, there’s always been something new, I’d be happy in future if a tour was just on the basis of an EP so it doesn’t have to be IMPORTANT or something that needs any mainstream push but it also doesn’t feel like some old nostalgia thing
Last edited by WorzelG; 04-11-2020 at 02:17 PM.
I agree on some levels.
Warning: Controversial opinion. No one has to agree with me.
There's a few decent songs for me, but the whole album as a whole just feels like a mess to me. There's a synthetic percussion sound that's used in many songs that I think if it were removed, I would enjoy the songs maybe a little more? Find my way, Various Methods of Escape, and Running feature it, though Running is just the kitchen sink of songs on this album. Seriously, what the hell is up with that? The guitar riff is ridic.
I agree about the lyrics.
1. I Would For You is classic example of that. Musically it's one of those huge, big soundscapes that he's good at creating - it's even reminiscent of the Fragile to me, but lyrically it falls flat, and the impact that would have been there is not registering. This was the kicker for me where I kinda tapped out of the album.
2. How do you call a song All Time Low and then end with lyrics "How did we get so high?"
I don't mean to bash on HM. I do enjoy Various Methods of Escape and Find My Way.
For reference, I enjoyed all the albums up to HM. I just remembered thinking WTF about 80% of the time I listened to it.
Hez Marks is like the High End of Low of Nails albums, in that it's so far ahead of it's fucking time that only the most loyal of fans find enjoyment in it..
What I mean is I dig the production of the album. I like it sonically. How they mixed avantgarde electronic stuff from the likes of Factory Floor or DFA in general with guitar elements and put a NIN spin on it. Those unused instrumentals are great as well. Yet to me there are songs that suffer from strange stylistic choices, arrangements that scream "cliche!!" or bad/uninteresting lyrics. Those songs exist on (almost) every album, but here they somehow stick out more.
That being said I just realized how similar HM is to WT in that regard.
Hesitation Marks is a great album but every song out of The Trilogy blows it out of the water.
Either way ,it is still an amazing album in many ways, it has great soundscapes and interesting ideas throughout, a lot of diversity and plenty of emotional moments, but I can see why some people dislike it
I agree. I love Hesitation Marks. I can't think of a bad song on the album.
I’m younger than most of the board so Hesitation Marks was the first album cycle I got to experience as a diehard fan and it was amazing. The Russel Mills art, song debuts at Fuji Rock, hearing Various Methods for the first time, seeing them live after thinking I’d never get to and then doing it two more times in 2014, it was a dream. I love the trilogy so much more but Hesitation Marks was full of wonderful songs and surrounded by an electric feeling of my favorite band coming back right as I hit the age to go to shows and be a part of it all and I’ll never separate it from that personally. I also don’t think people would have complained about Everything half as hard if it wasn’t originally poised to be a single and it works great in the flow of that record.
I just don't like anything on Bad Witch except the opener and closer. I'd take the majority of HM over the majority of Bad Witch any day. But that's just me. And Bad Witch is literally the only NIN release that I feel sort of "meh" about, so really, I'm not complaining about it at all. I don't think there's a single artist out there who has a catalog of NIN's size and doesn't have a single "miss" for me.
I absolutely love Bad Witch personally! Every song off of it is amazing to me, I do get where you are coming from though.
I don't think I have a single NIN album I would outright dislike, I guess my least listened to albums are Pretty Hate Machine and Hesitation Marks.
I think Bad Witch really comes alive as a performance. I’ve recently been watching the 2018 Madrid and Mexico festival shows and the run of Shit Mirror -Ahead of Ourselves - God Break Down the Door were astounding in both (and I did see the debut of Shit Mirror at the Royal Albert Hall)
You should watch as it’s unlikely they’ll play as much of the trilogy next time out. Shit Mirror starts at 29 mins and Robin gets a chance to shine singing the verses, the transition from that to Ahead of Ourselves is just great. Although I also love watching Piggy from this show (at 29 mins) and Somewhat Damaged starts. Incredible show all round. The Mexico show is great as well and has Trent actually playing sax on GBDTD plus I think the only pro-shot recording of The Perfect Drug