Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

Trent Reznor is pretty much the God of all techno-rock groups. He was doing the same things that they were doing, but about 3 years early. The Stabbing Westwards and the Orgys of the world looked at Nine Inch Nails and said, “That’s great! Let’s do that!” They didn’t do exactly that, finding subtle touches to add or subtract from that original sound to forge their own path. The point is, Nine Inch Nails was the first. Every other band of that ilk worships at the altar of Trent, and now perhaps now more than ever, we know why.

Nine Inch Nails was great when I was 14 and at least thought that my life was hell, but now that I’m a lot older, the dystopic society that NIN created seems pretty lackluster. It was especially disheartening when The Fragile came out when I was in college, because Trent didn’t seem able to escape the tortured woe-is-me template that was so beautiful for his first three albums. That was still a good album, because though Trent hadn’t seemed to grow at all with his lyrics, the music was very stylish and catchy. With his latest outing, With Teeth, he’s changed completely. Thankfully, he’s progressed beyond the “life sucks” paradigm he was stuck in, but what he’s replaced it with isn’t exactly cause for celebration.

This seems to be a more thoughtful and contemplative Nine Inch Nails, but that isn’t exactly a good thing. While before he made the way clear for bands like Placebo and Godhead, he apparently has taken the genre as far as it can go, and is now imitating the aforementioned bands. “The Hand That Feeds” is kind of cool with its Depeche-Mode-meets-Rammstein aesthetic, but the rest seems sluggishly stuck in already-mined territory. “Only,” the album’s second single, is set firmly in soundscapes already established by New Order, and doesn’t offer anything new. The video, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Any genre that is dependent on technology as its base is bound to run out when the technology stops getting newer. I would wager to say that is happening with techno, even dirgy metal-techno like With Teeth. However, I think Trent Reznor knows this, and that is why he isn’t trying to fight it. Throughout the whole thing, With Teeth seems to be celebrating the past, not looking to the future like basically all of the music in this genre before it. Looking behind you is all well and good, but eventually Trent will have to look in the direction he is facing. I think he has already realized that he has hit the wall.

Oddly enough, it is when he’s NOT heavy-handed or over-eager that makes for With Teeth’s best moments. This is strange because techno’s legacy seems to be rushing out of the gate to show the world all the new bells and whistles. The best track, “Right Where It Belongs,” starts off as a quiet contemplation, and ends with a doomy quality that suggests the worst is yet to come. Hmm. Maybe techno is a few steps away from the wall after all.

Prime Cuts:
The Hand That Feeds
Right Where It Belongs

22 Rating: 5