REVIEWS

Nine Inch Nails
The Slip

The Null Corporation

Posted: Friday, May 09, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Love 'em or hate 'em, Nine Inch Nails are proving themselves to be at the forefront of the latest revolutions in the marketability and distribution of music. From the viral promotion of Year Zero to the multiple format releases for Ghosts I-IV, Trent Reznor and his cohorts are continuing their advancement of new techniques to reach the masses, combined with the band's quintessential mix of underground musical motifs and mainstream accessibility. It would seem with the release of The Slip - arriving a mere two months after the Ghosts release - that Reznor is on a creative hot streak. Alas, the results are not what this writer would hope. Where Year Zero was a sociopolitical denouncement of the current state of affairs, presenting the embittered and vitriolic worldview set to caustic industrial textures recalling the best of the band's earlier output, and where Ghosts was a cornucopia of jam session abstraction, The Slip suffers from an identity crisis of sorts.

Beginning with the introductory ambience of "999,999" leading into the pounding yet grooving drums and heavily manipulated guitar and synth textures of "1,000,000," The Slip would almost seem to be a reversion to the indie rock leanings of With Teeth. The latter track, along with the grinding melancholy of "Head Down," could easily be songs by Queens of the Stone Age or even one of The White Stripes' heavier tracks if not for the excessive amount of distortion, treated and mangled to create atmospheres that would otherwise be relegated to a synthesizer (indeed, they could be, but they have such a raw, natural tonality that one can easily mistake them for guitar noise). The powerful drumming of Josh Freese no doubt adds to this quality, emphasizing the rock 'n' roll attitude, even as programmed beats make their way into the mix, once again demonstrating NIN's penchant for masterful production. The two singles of "Discipline" and "Echoplex" do little to improve the indie rock reflection as both are wrought with danceable beats topped off by funky chord progressions and catchy melodies that are on par with tracks like "Only" and "The Hand that Feeds" from With Teeth. And then, just when it seems like The Slip is beyond hope, "Lights in the Sky" creeps in with its cadence of whispered vocals and minimal piano, marching steadily into a buildup that culminates in dark ambience of "Corona Radiata," in which a distant drumbeat approaches amid a discordant stream of chorale synths, beckoning a monstrous crescendo that never quite arrives, though the anticipation of such leaves the listener clutching tightly. The same can be said of "The Four of Us are Dying" as dissonant noises hover amid a languid bass line, bearing a resemblance to material off of Ghosts, but the real treat is "Letting You" with its assaulting drumbeats and venomous punk-like delivery, making for one of the angriest NIN songs since the Broken era.

As the album shifts between the corrosive rage that defines many of Nine Inch Nails' more classic moments and the lighter fare that made With Teeth a dismal experience, The Slip seems to be an appropriate title, as if to give fans around the world the proverbial slip. One would expect that with the return of guitarist Robin Finck and after Ghosts and Year Zero that the production team of Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Alan Moulder would produce something more creatively satisfying; unfortunately, this was not to be. Once again released through a Creative Commons license, allowing listeners to download, remix, and sample the music freely for non-commercial use, and offered for free as a gift for the band's supporters over the years, there is a certain amount of relief in the knowledge that one need not pay for this record. Nine Inch Nails may be ahead of the curve in terms of marketing and promotion, and it seems that their fan base is rather secure, but The Slip simply fails to live up to the band's utmost potential.