Rock & Pop > Industrial Rock & Pop

Industrial for Beginners

Advantages: Innovative and illustrative of its time
Disadvantages: Often lacks depth and perspective

Nine Inch Nails are possibly the most popular industrial group there is, though the term group is a little inaccurate. In truth NIN is the brain child of Trent Reznor and he has remained the only consistent band member. There are many reasons for the popularity including more melodic and traditional structures than their industrial contemporaries and striking lyrics. This album was released in 1989 and was the result of a demo Reznor had been working ...
...recording studio. Working with top producers such as Flood, Keith LeBlanc, Adrian Sherwood and John Fryer, Reznor takes credit for all of the vocals, a great deal of the arrangement, programming, producing, engineering, digital editing and mixing and the majority of instrumentation including keyboards, drum machines and guitars. In fact the only other musician given credit on the album was Richard Patrick who plays guitar on 'Sanctified'. The album ...

kerrieryall 08.09.2008 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails

Remix this

Advantages: Some very good remixes
Disadvantages: Some rather overlong self indulgent remixes

Further down the Spiral is the remix companion of The Downward Spiral. Like the Fixed album of Broken remixes, the songs are treated with a sonic sledgehammer by a selection of artists including members of Nine Inch Nails, Jim Thirwell (aka Foetus), Coil and rather surprisingly the Aphex Twin. With the array of talent on board, you just know that this is going to be a startling album. The fact that the remixers have been given a free reign also ...
...is dark and sinister. Further down the Spiral proves again that Trent Reznor knows which remixers to bring in. The remixers all bring out different elements to the Nine Inch Nails sound and prove that the art of remixing is not just about slapping a cheesy disco beat under a vocal track. Next time someone argues that all remixes suck, just point them in the direction of any of the Nine Inch Nails remix albums are prove them wrong. ...

SidneyJames 15.05.2001 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Further Down The Spiral - Nine Inch Nails

The Fragile, it ain't

Advantages: Works extremely well as an album
Disadvantages: More songs should have been chosen

...for synthesised strings to calm things down. Towards the end, high pitched guitar and metallic swooshes dart from one ear to the other as an unknown woman whispers ‘Now you know, this is what it feels like’ and Trent emphasises it. As any NIN fan knows, this lyric is from the chorus to ‘The Wretched’, and this whole track almost seems like a build-up to… 3. The Wretched (Version)- The first of Hillebrandt’s two ...
...really do much but interupt things with a series of vintage computer game noises, watery synth and random stabs. Pretty good though. Uh-Oh, here comes another one of those… 6. Starf**kers (Version)- Now it’s the turn of Dave ‘Rave’ Ogilvie to have a go with the butchers knife. Beginning with a timestretched lurch and Europop synths with a bumping kick drum, this is going to be another camp affair. What this remix does with ...

chevhappy 20.08.2001 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Things Falling Apart - Nine Inch Nails

If it ain't broke, fix it anyway

Advantages: A couple of good songs
Disadvantages: A lot of dull of noise

...song, or at least the fixed version. Again, Wish on Broken was one of the better songs. There is a moment of hope in this song though, where part of the Broken song comes crashing in missing only the vocals. However it doesn’t last and the song starts heading off into drum and bass territory which again goes on and on and on, although we do get stabs of the Broken version again but to be honest that’s the only thing worth bothering about ...
...I don’t think I can make it to the end! * Happiness in Slavery * This track starts off somewhat better. Insistent drums and bass merge with a haunting synth and that pretty much sets the mood for the whole track. The lyric “Happiness in Slavery” bends in and out of the song although at over six minutes I feel the track is over long. However it’s not a particularly bad track and is the first track on the album that has actually ...

yhwman 11.06.2001 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Fixed - Nine Inch Nails

The future's not bright

Advantages: Great concept, great melodies, a real return to form
Disadvantages: None

...a more poppy sound. With Year Zero, coming just two years after With Teeth, Nine Inch Nails have achieved a spectacular return to form, going back to the Industrial roots of The Downward Spiral but combining it with more modern break beats and undeniably hooky melodies. Full marks to the marketing team behind this, as the unique campaign that ran ahead of the launch of this album made it one of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2007. Like all ...
...set in the year 2020 in a dystopian, apocalyptic, Orwellian world - Los Angeles has been destroyed by a nuclear terrorist attack, the government are adding drugs to the water supply supposedly to protect against bio-terrorism but there are indications that this may be a more sinister method of population control religious fundamentalists are at war and a resistance movement is gathering. Let's just say the future is not bright. What was really clever ...

bubblegum_princess 26.06.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Year Zero - Nine Inch Nails