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:: Sunday, April 22, 2007 ::

ALBUM & GIG REVIEW: Nine Inch Nails

ALBUM REVIEW: Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

This album marks a major change for Nine Inch Nails, not musically it's basically more of the same, but for once they haven't made their fans wait five years or more for new material. Their last album, 2005's With Teeth, was a slight shift towards the mainstream. This is more of a mixture between With Teeth and 2000's The Fragile.

Year Zero, like The Fragile and 1994's The Downward Spiral, is a concept album this time about a near future police state and the growing discontent of the population. My first impressions of the new material on hearing Survivalism were not good, it sounded like a bad Ministry cover from the early Nineties (see my gig review below for more details). This left me feeling apprehensive when I came to listen to the album for the first time. Thankfully my first impressions were blown away by some really interesting new tracks.

Survivalism is probably one of the worst tracks on the album, but it is much better than the live version lead me to believe. The first six tracks of the album are, unusually, the weakest. It's not until Capital G that the album really kicks off, it's one of those relentlessly catchy songs that NIN mastered with Closer, but the following track My Violent Heart starts subtly and breaks off into a glorious mangled noise fest.

A special mention should go to The Greater Good and The Great Destroyer which together form a twisted mix of classic NIN, DJ Shadow and breakcore, in short it's amazing.

See below for my rating, with comparative ratings for previous releases:

Pretty Hate Machine: 7/10
Broken: 10/10
The Downward Spiral: 9/10
The Fragile: 9/10
With Teeth: 8/10
Year Zero: 8/10


GIG REVIEW: Nine Inch Nails: Live at the Brixton Academy

I'm aware that Lil Popey has already reviewed this one, but in the interests of bloody mindedness I thought I'd review it as well. I don't know whether this will be a mirror of what Popey put as I haven't read his review yet, shame on me I know.

NIN's set began with the first five tracks from The Downward Spiral (Mr Self Destruct, Piggy, Heresy, March of the Pigs and Closer), which set the tone for the night with them playing Hurt, Reptile and The Becoming also all from that album. They also played Wish and Last from Broken, with only two tracks coming from With Teeth about four tracks from The Fragile and two tracks from Year Zero.

The new material was thoroughly underwhelming. I'm not sure whether it was their lack of familiarity with it or a mixing issue, but it sounded like their new material were dodgy Ministry covers. The venue was packed to capacity and the atmosphere was great. The majority of the crowd were singing along to most of the songs, it's an unusual experience to be in a room with hundreds of people singing "I want to f*** you like an animal!".

The standout moment of the night was when the rest of the band left the stage and Trent Reznor performed Hurt on a keyboard. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and is a moment I will never forget.

We were in the circle and unfortunately that meant some of the middle frequencies weren't getting to us during the majority of the show. They didn't do an encore which was a bit of a letdown. The show was great, apart from the minor gripes.

:: Spokesy 22.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post]    ::
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