NIN - concrete industrial artistry

The speed some bands make it to the British top is astonishing and not even the mightiest legend of them all, The Beatles, did have such an easy ride. Just look at the Kasabian, playing Ally Pally last week after ONE album only!? Hardly a year ago the band were performing at the ‘paperback’-sized venues, such as London’s Barfly!? They certainly have potential but need to develop properly before being trusted in front of 7 thou kids!

There are plenty of other bands that just after one disc make huge strides, from Franz Ferdinand to Keane to… What are these outfits going to do on their sophomore releases? Is the only way down? And, just to return to the Kasabian date at the Ally Pally: what were security thinking when they were confiscating journalists’ biros - that we could prick someone or forget how average the band were by the time the review is keyed in?

The whole music scene has been going through a creative downturn and profit has been its main motivator for too many years. Technology’s been pushing it along very nicely, thank you, but how long with our ‘in-ness’ with iPod-type players last? Isn’t it simply an updating of Walkman-craze that isolates listeners from the communal experience music is supposed to provide? The penetration of music has never been so huge and Ringtones seem to be another way to make a lot of money out of limited, sometime hardly any - ideas.

Even some long established bands are and have been stagnating for such a long time: from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Oasis to… our Album of the Week - Nine Inch Nails' ‘With Teeth’.

Nine Inch Nails return with a new album after another several years of gestating, supplanting ‘Fragile’ of 1999. For the difference of that opus that attempted to move from the industrial template, Trent Reznor is now back to the more familiar territory, creating monumental sonic sculpture with near-embarrassing lyrics.

That’s always been the thing with Reznor - the dual, tragicomic nature: the sounds are always gargantuan but the lyrics are very juvenile, often trite and near superfluous. If a 38-year-old man can’t come up with anything better but “I’m so f**king alone/Poor Me”, then you must ask how did he manage to write ‘Hurt’ that Johnny Cash turned into a glorious epitaph?

The NIN’s fourth studio album features the almighty rock beast of ‘The Hand That Feeds’ that, as all else on ‘With Teeth’, is powered by the helpful Dave ‘rent-a-drum’ Grohl, otherwise a leader of his own Foo Fighters; “Working with [Grohl] has been one of the most inspiring and exciting experiences I've had in the studio,” commented Reznor.

It is the NIN’s best album since ‘The Downward Spiral’ of eleven years ago. But that, this time, ain’t nought special.

8/10