Album A Day: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

[TJ's note: We're inching ever closer to the official move from this site to our new home on Wordpress. Any and all mp3s posted here will not longer be picked up by Hype Machine, as they have been given the new URL for the site. Odds are by the end of next week this site will be officially closed. Change your bookmarks, Google Readers, RSS feeds, etc. accordingly.]

In honor of Nine Inch Nails' release of 400 GB of video footage yesterday, I'm listening to their most recent record, 2008's The Slip today. I was considering playing the bootleg I have of their show at Woodstock '94, but I'm saving that for an eventual week of live shows.

The Slip was a stellar blend of old and new for Trent Reznor. It had the driving, danceable singles in "Discipline" and "Echoplex" that were reminiscent of With Teeth, alongside the spacey instrumentals of "Corona Radiata" that made Ghosts I-IV a hit earlier that same year. In between those, you get the head-pounding, teeth-gnashing industrial that made Trent Reznor a hit in the early 90s. In many ways its a perfect introduction to NIN for people whose knowledge of the band begins and ends with the line "I wanna f--- you like an animal"*.

Lyrically Reznor is rarely better than he was at this point, and the music carries an intensity that warrants the epic tour that just wrapped up. Even "Lights In The Sky" (the song for which said tour was named) in its subdued angst holds so much power that you forgive its funeral march tempo. Despite getting a bit tedious around the seven minute "Corona Radiata", The Slip holds up so well leading to that point that you let Reznor indulge for one song just to hear what he does next. Sure enough, the patience is rewarded with the trippy "The Four Of Us Are Dying" and one last headbanger in "Demon Seed". A worthy end to an album

It's a shame that The Slip was so widely ignored on Best of '08 lists this year, since in a year where rock music struggled to have its voice heard amongst the return of Britney Spears, the reign of Lil Wayne, and that friggin' garbage that was "Low", Nine Inch Nails stood out as a shining bright light amongst a dim sky.

Nine Inch Nails - Discipline
Nine Inch Nails - Lights In The Sky
You can still download The Slip for free at NIN's official website

==TJ==

*I'm of course referring to the chorus of "Closer", not that of the despicable Limp Bizkit song "Hot Dog". Apologies for any confusion (though if you were thinking of Limp Bizkit in the midst of a blog about Nine Inch Nails, we might need to have a chat...)