NINE INCH NAILS
NINE INCH NAILS are Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
with
DAVE GROHL: Drums on "The Idea Of You"
MARIQUEEN MAANDIQ: Vocals on "She's Gone Away"
DAVE NAVARRO: Guitar on "Burning Bright (Field On Fire)"
Composed, Produced, Arranged and Performed by Nine Inch Nails
Released December 23, 2016
"It's an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make. It's an EP because that ended up being the proper length to tell that story."
-Trent Reznor
It has been a very long four years since we last heard from Nine Inch Nails, in this case via the intoxicating and surprisingly inviting "Hesitation Marks" (released September 3, 2013), but mastermind Trent Reznor has been anything but lazy.
For both of the latter two scores and soundtrack albums, I have just recently downloaded both of them (I was hoping for physical CD releases but there seems not to be any possibility at this time) and therefore, I have just begun listening. That being said, what I have heard thus far feel very much of a piece to Reznor and Ross's previous and deeply innovative film scores to Director David Fincher's "The Social Network" (released September 28, 2010), "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (released December 9, 2011) and "Gone Girl" (released September 30, 2014), as they do represent a certain mastery of texture and unsettling moods that intoxicate and greatly as they disturb.
Trent Reznor, for that matter, has exemplified a certain mastery of texture and moody atmospherics throughout the entirety of his career as Nine Inch Nails--even when he displays his music at its most combative, percussive, and at times, even bludgeoning. Now, that his partnership with Atticus Ross has only continued to solidify and blossom to the point where Ross is now listed as the sole official second member of Nine Inch Nails, the future of the band has most certainly opened itself up to a host of new musical possibilities.
And so we arrive with "Not The Actual Events," the first music to arrive under the Nine Inch Nails banner in nearly four years. While this EP runs only 21 minutes in duration, and with the promise of two major NIN projects to arrive later this year, what we have right at this time is a tightly wound and often surprising warning shot for 2017.
Comprising only five selections, "Not the Actual Events" opens with the brief yet urgently pulsating "Branches/Bones," a song that some might easily read as Reznor's self-deprecating remarks to dipping a toe back into the NIN arena again as he sings, "Feels like I've been here before." Yet, what I think is honestly being delivered is an opening of some sort of unspeakable violence as the song describes a dichotomy that is chilling to regard even with the plot holes left vacant.
"Cold and black and infinite, with nothing left to lose
If you try to keep the flies away, the makeup hides the bruise
Her branches are the bones that break, become a perfect line
And no, he won't just be a man who sometimes, he won't just
be a man who's sometimes..."
Once "Branches/Bones" build upwards in the standard dissonant NIN crescendo, we abruptly segue into the percolating rhythms of "Dear World," where our narrator splinters into two distinct monologues (one in each speaker to a most captivating effect) yet begins and concludes with the unsettling line, "Yes, everyone seems to be asleep."
The EP's third track, "She's Gone Away," is a six minute crawl of creeping doom featuring a new growl in Trent Reznor's vocals that accentuate the grinding turbulence of the insistently booming yet far away sounding drums, the ominous keyboards suggesting a sinister melody and the swirling ambiance which provides the atmosphere of what sounds to be a damaged mind in the throes of a horrific act either real or imagined.
With Dave Grohl's drums at the helm and Reznor's skillful, intensely minimalist piano,merged with the type of buzzsaw/machine gun styled guitars not really heard since the "Broken" EP (released September 22, 1992), "The Idea Of You" blazes the EP into fully adrenalized territory as the narrator releases another breathlessly unhinged monologue of whispered severity.
"Maybe that was somebody else
Maybe I was somebody else
I'm somebody, for what that's worth, if that means anything anymore
I think there's something just wrong with me
I have been wondering, when did you know?
You know, really know?
No no no no, I don't think that's going to happen here
You missed all that on the way out
Remember, I don't want to remember anymore
Maybe I was somebody else?
Just go back to the idea of me
Just go back to the idea of me
Just go back to the idea of me
Just-"
Finally, the splintered psyche unravels completely in the EP's fifth and final track, the guitar feedback wall and Reznor's buried in the mix howling vocals of "Burning Bright (Field On Fire)."
"I'm going back
Of course I am
As if I ever had a choice
Back to what I always knew I was
On the inside
Back to what I really am
Look at this pathetic place I made
With little bits of sticks and hair
And anything I found along the way
And tell yourself, you know?
You're not what you really know you are
You know?
Of course you do
I think I may have even listened to you
I think I may have even listened to you
At the height of my demise...
I am forgiven
I am free
I am a field on fire..."
And so, "Not The Actual Events" concludes...in ashes...
Nine Inch Nails' "Not The Actual Events" sounds and feels like the treatment or a soundtrack to a David Fincher film not yet even conceived as this surreal, grim tale starring an unreliable narrator trapped within or released from a fractured mental state sounds like a movie that could easily serve as a companion piece to his previous works including "Seven" (1995), "Fight Club" (1999), "Zodiac" (2007) and the aforementioned "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (2011) and "Gone Girl" (2014).
To that end, the EP also sounds like the closest thing Nine Inch Nails has released that feels of a similar musical stratosphere as "The Downward Spiral" (released March 8, 1994) and "The Fragile" (released September 21, 1999) as we are again given a figure that struggles with a dense and self-destructive mental illness that plays out in violent fantasies and quite possibly, equally violent realities.
Musically, the album represents a return to the more propulsive side of Nine Inch Nails while also bringing about different multi-layers to give your headphones a superior workout. With that assessment, I do not wish to suggest that Trent Reznor and now with Atticus Ross have delivered something that is uninspired or derivative of Reznor's own past work. It just all feels like a continuation as well as something that may serve as a "Hello" to listeners who may have not been keeping up with Reznor's extracurricular activities with his film scores as well as his work with his other band How To Destroy Angels.
Remember, "Not The Actual Events" is not designed to serve and exist as the full artistic statement. What we have been given is a startling preview and I am already extremely anxious to discover what will undoubtedly arrive later this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment