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Faceplams: well the first problem is there are 5 pictures and 6 songs
Flaccid Member
well the first problem is there are 5 pictures and 6 songs
Hollywood Butt Double
Hahaha!Originally Posted by dvdglss
Fuck it... I’ll play (and yes, I know there is zero connection here. I’m just fucking around).
Top left: Shit Mirror
Why? It looks like a dollop of excrement flung haphazardly at a mirror.
Top right: Play the Goddamned Part
Why? The finger looks like it’s reaching for the play button and/or instructing me to do so at its behest.
Bottom left: Over and Out
Why? Because dead is why.
Bottom middle: God Break Down The Door
Why? The penitent man is humble before God. The penitent man will kneel. Indiana Jones taught me that.
Bottom right: Ahead of Ourselves
Why? Our innovations are almost immediately obsolete, insignificant, antiquated, and irrelevant. If you disagree, feel free to celebrate your ignorance... knuckle-dragging animal.
“I’m Not From This World” has yet to be photographed. It will... eventually.
Last edited by caca; 07-10-2018 at 10:24 PM.
Stubby Member
Ah, being a NIN fan is difficult. I'm trying to put a hold on spending and this is the first time I haven't got anything on release since I got into them in the early 90's.
Enjoying it on Spotify but really want to enjoy the Physical Art Experience to it all...
I'll have to just wait.
Throbbing Member
the top right is picture six... all white on purpose!
Maybe even, the 5 pictures are on... a Shit Mirror!
Throbbing Member
Anyone figured out what the art on the inner sleeve is supposed to be? Looks a bit like the “house of dust” to me.
Active Member
Maybe...a rusted circuit board...?
Active Member
Anyone who ordered the autographed postcard from JB Hi-Fi & yours came (somewhat) damaged....have you contacted them about it? Did you get a response? And can you post an actual email address to email them at? I used the form on their site and haven't heard back yet and its been two days.
Flaccid Member
Has anyone noticed this fact before?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_computerThe Harwell computer, later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH),[1] or the Harwell Dekatron Computer,[2][3] is an early British relay-based computer of the 1950s. From 2009 to 2012, it was restored at the National Museum of Computing.[4] In 2013, for the second time the Guinness Book of World Records recognised it as the world's oldest working digital computer.
http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/witch.htm
Throbbing Member
I feel like I need context on how this has anything to do with NIN?
Throbbing Member
Bad WITCH.
God is an American
Really not seeing how a machine that basically amounts to a massively overgrown (and slow) pocket calculator can be "good" or "bad".
Throbbing Member
It would seem Trent believes that the use of it can be classified as such. “The more we’ve connected, the dumber we’ve become.” If not for the first digital computer, we’d never have reached that point.
Throbbing Member
That's a HUGE reach. He's said nothing bad about technology in general, just the social aspect. And it's not the first digital computer. And countless things have "witch" in the name, I doubt it's related to most of them.
If it is, I vote it's referencing the delicious invention of the "sandwich." See, cause the record's dirty (like sand) and has witch in the title (which is a homophone.)
Active Member
Stop.
Flaccid Member
For me, the 5 five pictures on the sleeve are interconnected:
- it's a microchip OK, but you can clearly see 4 tombs (in the lower part of the image);
- so the guy is kneeling to the technolgy ... and to the tombs too;
- the guy's position and its shadow seems to create the extension of the hand (the forearm). I think it's on purpose because you can not see that effect on the 2nd version of the sleeve;
- the finger is touching a shadow, and this shadow is the extension of the blacksun on the left (sun + finger = shadow --> "the cave")
- so the guy is kneeling to a shadow too ! Is this shadow linked with the technology ?
- the skull and the guy are upside down, but they are looking in the same direction (the tombs).
- actually the skull is looking to the guy's butt, so he is a pervert but it's another theory.
An other thing we can see in this sleeve:
David Bowie Blackstar --> NIN's black sun !
Flaccid Member
I mean:
Blackstar was the last Bowie album and TR just annoucend that it was his last concert in Europe ever ! :/
Is it his last album too ??
Active Member
No, he didn't.
But he did say that he'd never play I Can't Give Everything Away again.
Flaccid Member
I've readen it several times: He s said that at the end of "The Lovers".
Active Member
Direct quote: "This is our last show in Europe for...maybe ever...I don't know." Not exactly a declaration.
Active Member
I can get behind this. He did have the quote about "a broken computer chip" and there's a really outdated computer chip on the cover. There have been reachier reaches...
Banned
I have the bootleg for Bonnaroo 2009 where Trent claims its the last show they will ever play in America....And well...yeah
Throbbing Member
I would probably go back and forth on ending touring stuff if I were in his spot too, so I'm not sure how seriously I would take those comments one way or the other.
If I saw an official note about calling it quits it on the website or something then sure but until then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Throbbing Member
I have a theory re BW cover images, but who knows..
1. Black sun/solar flare or imagery of cosmic event or creation ie representing when we are created (or born into this world)
2. Finger - (hint from "Copy of A" on Hesitation Marks "I am just a finger on a trigger on a finger Doing everything I'm told to do Always my intention my intention your attention Just doing everything you tell me to")
3. Skeleton representing death
4. Kneeling figure, bowing down in an enslaved/submissive manner
5. IC Chip - representing technology
So my take is from the moment we are created (born) we are doing what we are told to by others (propagandized, herd mentality, submissive to authoritarian control) until we die while being enslaved by technology.
Ahead of Ourselves is the key track here where Trent laments the state of the world and how we seem to be heading down the wrong path as a species. More intent on trashing the place whilst thinking we are in control of it all via technology.
"Not quite as clever as we think we are
Knuckle dragging animal
When we could have done anything
We wound up building this
We deserve
With illusions of enlightenment
With our snouts in the dirt"
Kind of ties in with similar themes from Add Violence.
Any other theories?
Active Member
Yeah, Wave Goodbye was a thing that happened.
If he had announced that it was definitely the end, there would be a forum-wide meltdown. People would be scrambling for tickets for upcoming shows (maybe buy them if you haven't got some already, just in case).
Tbh, I've treated every show since Wave Goodbye as the final show I'll ever see. This is TR's gift to us.
Life is fragile. Anything can happen.
Throbbing Member
At least, it's the most plausible reasoning behind the title we've seen so far. I really don't think it's too far-fetched when considering the attention to detail that went into the AV cover. For example, did anyone here know what the Kardashiev scale was?
Throbbing Member
Not sure I get the old or 'broken chip' analogy. Used to work in the industry and the image looks more like a ceramic test chip. They are pre made ceramic casings with a solderable lid that are used to test out new IC's with before they are bug free and then released into production in their black resin casings. The opening in the top cover of the IC ceramic casing is indicative of this. Not sure if it means anything though re old or broken.
Active Member
I don't think it's that concrete. I was referring to Reznor's interview Lizzy Goodman where he said of the album/phase/world "this is dirt and a broken computer chip and everything you believe in is really just bullshit."
Throbbing Member
Thanks I forgot to look back at that interview it was a good one will need to re-read it fully.
I think metaphorically speaking he is referring to a 'broken chip' as meaning "technology". He refers to us all thinking that we expect the future "to be full matrix virtual reality" but our trust in technology won't save us and we will ultimately be doomed by it. So IMO he's sort of hypothesising on our current trajectory a "The Road" type ending rather than a "The Matrix" one. For a variety of reasons I can agree with that too.
"I wanted the art direction of Bad Witch to feel like shadows on a cave wall and we’re trying to figure out what it is and really there’s no nice, clean, safe scientific explanation. We’re just an accident"
So here we are on the planet as an accident, and stumbling along making our planet a bit less habitable by the minute whilst worshiping our 'broken chip' rather than say the important stuff like the quality of the air we breathe, water we drink etc etc...
Active Member
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Stubby Member
So I've finally gotten around to giving Bad Witch the time it deserves and I have to say that I am underwhelmed. As abrasive and impenetrable as Trent's music has sometimes been in the past (especially in the immediate sense upon a first listen), there has always been a great melody lurking somewhere. But nothing on here is particularly catchy, and I am finding a lot of the sounds/arrangements to be derivative of past works (a little Ghosts, a little NTAE, a little HTDA). Add Violence to me, is the clear high-water mark of this trilogy. Less Than has by far the biggest hook out of the 16 songs. And The Background World is probably my favorite NIN song since Demon Seed. The Lovers and This Isn't The Place really resonate ("reznorate") on a personal level. Etc..
I'm sure Shit Mirror will be fun live. And the prominent use of sax on these songs provides an interesting twist. But I am wishing for more guitar, more singing, more something...to draw me in.
Perhaps it's the ultimate grower? I am going to keep at it..
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