Nine Inch Nails
With Teeth

Overall: Despite some individually weak songs, Nine Inch Nails delivers a great album that is more than the sum of it's parts. I was origionally not a fan of the title, but With Teeth really represents the raw, live quality of the record. It's not, however a huge departure for them. It's not as technically interesting or groundgreaking as The Downward Spiral, and it's not as varied as The Fragile. With Teeth feels like Nine Inch Nails if they had followed the Broken path, and if you love Broken, you will find a lot here to love.

For me it's unfortunate that Trent has not followed the path that he started with his Still E.P. that was released with the big multimedia And All That Could Have Been, but there is always hope that Trent can do that in the future.

"The Hand That Feeds", "Only", "Right Where It Belongs", "Every Day Is Exactly the Same" have single potential.

“All the Love in the World”
“All the Love in the World” is the first time that a Nine Inch Nails album has started out with something so smooth and chilled. “All the Love…” is simple, and it’s lyrically unchallenging. It primarily exists (in my opinion) as a bridge between The Fragile and With Teeth. The song is largely unremarkable up until the halfway mark where Trent goes into this bouncy rhythm which is actually one of the most original things Nine Inch Nails do on this record.

“You Know What You Are?”1992 was “Twenty-six years and on my way to hell”. That would make Trent roughly 39 right now, and you know what? That makes him TOO OLD to be singing lines like “DON’T YOU FUCKING KNOW WHAT YOU ARE?????”. The song sounds like the hard part of "The Perfect Drug" a little too much for my tastes.

“The Collector”
Dave Grohlish drums dominated “The Collector”… a largely unremarkable track. The song weaves in and out between the clumsy drums and the frantic screaming chorus. It’s not such a bad song, it’s just not very challenging.

“The Hand that Feeds”
Everybody’s heard this song, and it is surprisingly brisk for a little Nine Inch Nails song. It’s like “March of the Pigs”… it’s much too short and much to fun to really ever hate, although it really doesn’t share the originality of the aforementioned “Pigs”. Good chorus, good sing along.

“Love is Not Enough”
“Love…” has the worst lyrics on all of With Teeth. “The closer we realize / we cover ourselves with lies / etc. etc. etc.”. Just garbage. The song however has a nice crunchy riff and is fun. I told my friend Mike that this song was a lot like “Where is Everybody” from The Fragile in that it has those horrible lyrics that make you squirm but you find yourself listening to as a guilty pleasure.

“Every Day is Exactly the Same”
This has pretty cliché lines in it too… but they are some of my fav on the record… “I believe I can see the future / cause I repeat the same routine”, “I can’t tell you how this started / but I can tell you exactly how it will end”… it’s not the lyrics but the delivery. The chorus is okay (like most Nine Inch Nails songs, the best part is not the choruses) but this song is a nice diversion.

And this is where the album gets weird.

“With Teeth”
“With Teeth” or “WITH-A TEETH-A” is infectious. It has big enough bass to appease the average gangsta youth and still a great drumtrack. Decent lyrics and with a quiet middle.

“Only”
Imagine “Into the Void” mixed with “Down in it”… this is where Trent RAPS over a nice drum machine beat and some real honest to god synths. “Only” will be an instant favorite with any Nine Inch Nails fan. And it’s fun and bouncy. “And I just made you up… to hurt myself”.

“Getting Smaller”
This is as close to punk as Nine Inch Nails will ever, ever get. This just rocks, and I would challenge any Nine Inch Nails fan to hate this little song.

“Sunspots”
“Sunspots” is Trent Reznor’s little sex song. You can get your grind on while listening to it’s slow and smooth rock groove. Decent, sexy lyrics. Good bass line.

“The Line Begins to Blur”
By the time we get here, “The Line Begins to Blur” starts the rapid decent towards the end of the record and is one of this record’s best songs. It is verses are frantic and hate (self hate!) filled. The choruses allow for a little more breathing room, adding a bit of piano. “There are things that I said I would never do / there are fears that I can not believe have come true / for my soul is to sick and too little and too late / and myself I have grown to weary to hate”.

“Beside You In Time”
This song, along with “With Teeth” are probably the more interesting songs on the record… “Beside You in Time” is one of those songs you will end up skipping the first few times through the record, only later to realize it’s brilliance. Watch out for that ending, the pace picks up a little.

“Right Where it Belongs”
My favorite song at the moment. The lyrics aren’t too great but aren’t poor. The song starts out as a little mono tune but goes WAY stereo mid way through it. It’s reminiscent of “The Great Below” and is probably the best crafted song in terms of traditional songwriting on the album. The album and the song ends with a sweet distressed piano sound, one of those weary “Closer” piano songs that leave you a little bit haunted.

I like The Hand that Feeds!!!

Nice review Andaroo. Is this based on a listen of the stereo mix or the 5.1 dolby mix? I have been listening to the record since it leaked on April 14th and when I popped in the dualdisc today I was taken aback at how completely different an experience it was. There are so many more sounds now, mostly blaring from the rear channels, that were previously either inaudible or very down in the stereo mix. You now hear all the Trent harmonies at the end of "All the Love in the World" coming from different speakers, the intro synth of "You Know What You Are" doing laps around all five speakers, a completely new life for "Getting Smaller" which nicely places the lead guitar part in your left front speaker so that you can hear it better and on and on and on :wink: . If there is a downside to the experience it would be that, at times, the overall volume of the track would be lower than on the stereo mix, things wouldn't hit as hard or the subwoofer would seem like it was underperforming . Individually adjusting speaker volumes might fix that problem though.

As far as the album goes, I'm quite impressed with the variety of songs on it and think that you could go through and find a song that would fit on any of his previous albums quite nicely. I don't recall Trent ever writing a song that sounded like "All the Love in the World" or "With Teeth" though, so the disc is not devoid of originality. I think "Only" is not only the best song on the album, but also one of the best things he has ever written. Other stand-outs are the previously mentioned "All the Love in the World", the brilliant "Right Where it Belongs" and the big-rock stomp of Sunspots.

Terrific album.

Songs that immediately pop out 'cos of their greatness:

All the love in the world
Every day is exactly the same
Right where it belongs

The last two songs on the album are currently my favorte.

You talk about the lyrics too much. Its the music that matters most.

The songs I've lsitened to so far (All the Love in the World) are great.


:2up:

My system isn't really set up for audio CDs and although I asked for the dual I opted for the cheaper regular CD (because I also bought Episode III score and needed extra money, heh).

I bet the part where "Right Where It Belongs" goes from "mono" to full stereo must be a great moment in 5.1?


Lyrics matter more than music, to my ears. The message is conveyed through both, but dumb lyrics can sink an otherwise interesting sounding song, meanwhile, you can have a simple song elevated by beautiful poetic lyrics.

Lyrics are a large part of why Nine Inch Nails became as successful as they are today. Critisizing the sometimes childish lyrics coming out of the mouth of a near 40ish year old man is completely relevant.

The best lyrics in the world mean nothing when you cant enjoy the music, while somewhat bad lyrics can be overlooked if the music is just awesome. Although lyrics can occassionaly ruin songs, it happens an awful lot less than bad music ruining a song, and the lyrics have to be *really* bad, like they'd have to talk about monkies or something.

Then I feel sorry for you Squee. Your opinion does explain why so much worthless pop shit is played on the radio however.

You feel sorry for me cause I can enjoy good music when I hear it and not get all twisted in a bunch over cliched or even somewhat bad lyrics? (granted, they cant be too bad, otherwise the whole song is ruined) With No, my sir, I feel sorry for you. Actually, I dont, but you see how I turned that around? Eh? Eh? Yeeeaaahhh.

Anyway, Pop shit has shit music and shit lyrics, so I dont see how my opinion explains that.

With Teeth

Favorite Songs: Beside You in Time, Right Where it Belongs, Only, Every Day is Exactly the Same

Least favorite song: With Teeth. (are the lyrics good? I cant tell, the music puts me to sleep.)

Favorite Nine Inch Nails albums

1. Downward Spiral: **** (my all-time favorite NiN songs are on this album, "Ruiner." and "Becoming.")
2. The Fragile: **** (Massive undertaking lots of varying styles of songs, left side is better than right, but both sides are really good.)
3. With Teeth: ***1/2 (Slightly dissapointing because this took 5 years to make, while The Fragile also took 5 years to make and contained so much more, not only amount of songs but depth too)
4. Pretty Hate Machine: ***1/2 (Might be higher than With Teeth if it didnt sound like it was made on a cassio keyboard)

Actually, that moment is just slightly more impressive on the surround mix. Surprisingly, it is the songs like Getting Smaller and Love is Not Enough that benefit the most with some truly great added effects. The champion though, is You Know What You Are, which is an absolute monster in 5.1 .

Oh, and Trent didn't take 5 years to make this record. He began writing in January of 2004 and finished by the end of the year. The remaining 4 1/2 years were spent touring, collaborating on projects that may never see the light of day (De La Rocha, Tapeworm) and getting his life together after overcoming addiction. So It's kind of hard to begrudge him for his most recent gap between albums. I expect to see his next album within the next 2-3 years for sure.

Awww... That's so sweet of you to have so much faith in Tent to get out an album in 2-3 years. Very commendable.

Well, considering that half of it is already finished, I think it's a decent bet :wink: .

Doesnt mean he wont trash it and start over. :wink: Just like Tool, I would be really surprised if they ever release an album in under 4 years.