Nine
Inch Nails – With Teeth (CD)
Sound: B+
Music: A
Following after the band’s
most epic creation, The Fragile, Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, With
Teeth, takes you on a rollercoaster ride of sadness and rages on somewhere
in between. One of the biggest
differences in this album as opposed to their last few is the lack of Trent
Reznor’s trademark instrumentals. Being
a huge fan of the band myself, I found this to be a bit discouraging,
especially having just been spoiled with so many classic tracks on The
Fragile. Still, With Teeth
is a notch above any thing else new piling into CD stores around the country
these days.
The album starts off with the
enchanting song “All The Love In The World” then switches back to
hardcore mode with “You Know Who You Are.” It’s an awkward switch when you first put in the album. The album’s single “The Hand That Feeds”
is one hundred percent addicting. No
matter how many times I hear that song – whether it be on the radio or
television or wherever – it always gets stuffed into my head. It’s brilliant – as is anything that Trent
Reznor has put out in the past few years.
His use of electronics and synth are getting shifted into a new direction
as well – heard in “Beside You In Time”, “The Collector” and “Only.” Speaking of “Only”, it just had a
Music Video directed David Fincher, the Fight Club director who also has
an impressive array of Video credits. With
Teeth is a nice trip back to the band’s more gothic roots
The PCM 2.0 16Bit/44.1kHz
Stereo sound on this album is fantastic.
It is loud, full and rich as much as it could be in this format. If that is not good enough, there is an
especially amazing 5.1 surround mix on the DualDisc that sucks you into the
music all the more, with Reznor’s genius that circle from the front and the
rear speakers. The great thing about
listening to Nine Inch Nails’ surround mixes is that you can always pick up a
little something in the background that you didn’t hear before. Both discs have a PCM side, while the
DualDisc has extras like a great slide slow that plays throughout the album and
also has samples of tracks off previous albums and the Video for “The Hand
that Feeds.” That DVD flipside has
a MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) side that we hope to cover sometime down the
line.
With Teeth is tough for fans to respect I think because it
is so different compared to The Downward Spiral (reviewed elsewhere on
this site) and The Fragile. I’ve
heard some people say that this album would’ve came best in between the two
though I don’t think so. I think this
album is a little test of something larger and more epic to come. It seems to have come out perhaps too
quickly. Either way, I applaud Trent
Reznor is being the leader of the industrial metal revolution.
- Jamie Lockhart
