Nine Inch Nails - WithTeeth

Tue 24th May, 2005 in Music Reviews

In case you have been living in a box under the stairs for the last month, you will know that the new Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth, has finally been released. The moments of spine-tingling rage and ear-blasting assaults of the days of yore are no longer a main feature, instead only appearing here and there, but that doesn’t mean that this album does not have the capacity to be impacting. It’s just approached from a different angle.

With Teeth sounds every bit Nine Inch Nails, without the engulfing brutality of The Fragile. It is an album that I have warmed to immensely after repeated listens, and, truth be told, I do not want to write a review littered with comparisons; I’d rather just review this album for what it is – a damn fine piece of work.

Trent Reznor is the king of sinister, and opener All The Love In The World is a fitting illustration of this. He calmly sings “why do you get all the love in the world?”, a freakish sentiment if ever I’ve heard one. As the song progresses, the electronic element becomes a bit more involved, increasing in frequency until the piano transforms it into a faster, more urgent song, with thumping drums and fuzz added in for good measure.

Ye olde aggression rears its head with You Know What You Are?, a track that begins with great rapid-fire drums, soon to be joined by a great industrial sound that is broken up midway by the ‘soft’ part of the familiar NIN loud-soft-loud formula, which makes the return to the brutality of the song so much more effective. Reznor yells “don’t you fucking know what you are?” throughout the song in that rage-fuelled voice that we are all so familiar with.

With Teeth (or ‘with-a theeth-a’ as it shall forever be known to me) is another great track in which the extended quiet part mid-way through the song ends abruptly with fuzzy synth pounding through the speakers. The rest of the song is good too – it sounds somewhat repressed when it begins, but is all the more intense for it, and you can’t really go past the snarled repetition of “with teeth” that sticks in your mind after the song has finished.

There are moments when the quality starts to wane a bit – for example The Collector, where the chorus sits awkwardly amongst the song, and (don’t kill me) first single The Hand That Feeds, which is one of, if not the most, disappointingly sub-standard and forgettable songs on the record. To my ears, it just sounds a bit tired and monotonous.

On the opposite side of the scale, however, are the fantastic Every Day Is Exactly The Same and Only.

Every Day Is Exactly The Same begins with the lyrics “I believe I can see the future, because I repeat the same routine” and from there progresses the slowest and most gentle song on the album, while also being fantastically dark and depressing. The chorus is accompanied by repetitive effects that really drive home the feeling of futility that is being sung about. One of the best things about Reznor is that his voice betrays his emotion – a particular word or phrase escapes as a snarl of rage and this is most effective in an otherwise down-tempo song such as this one.

Only is full of eighties sounding synth accompanied by piano and a simple backdrop of simple guitar and drums. The lyrics are spoken, rather than sung, and this is particularly effective, as Reznor says conversationally:

“Yes I am alone, but then again I always was, 
  Far back as I can tell, I think maybe it’s because,
  Because you were never really real to begin with.

  I just made you up to hurt myself.”

This song is by far one of the creepiest on the album thanks to lines such as the above and the falsetto that accompanies the lyrics on occasion.

With Teeth is bound to leave a few brows furrowed, particularly due to the absence of an undercurrent of viciousness, but it is quite sinister and effective in a lot of other ways. On the whole, this is a thoroughly satisfying release by NIN, made all the more sweet by the announcement of the impending tour!