Nine Inch Nails sound oddly old fashioned in 2013. Have you heard the new single “Came Back Haunted”? Compared with “On sight”,, I mean. “On Sight” sounds like Nine Inch Nails beats shredded through a machine and with some Gary Glitter or Adam Ants Burundi bongos distorted through a squeaker, whereas Nine Inch Nails sounds an awful lot like Nine Inch Nails.
It is not that that Trent Reznor is old fashioned, it is rather that his innovations have been so built into EDM and hip hop DNA that he sounds old fashioned. Nine Inch Nails were as innovative as humanly possible, they were to Marilyn Manson what the Beatles were to the Bay City Rollers.
But they peaked early with The Downward spiral and never really improved on it till Trent made The Social Network soundtrack. His other effort, How To Destroy Angels, was a little on the lame side.
So anyway, after years of final tours and last recordings and new by-ways, none of it stuck and Trent and the NINs are back and trust me, this ain’t Replacement style excitement at but even so, it is excitement and with a new album to plug, NIN are on the Arena circuit one mo’ gin. Hesitation Marks, their first album in five years, will be dropping in September and NIN will be at Barclay Center October 14th and 15th. I’m going to the Monday gig and I have high hopes that it will be the hard pounding drill in the frontal lobe we all want all the time.