Skip to main content

EP REVIEW: "Add Violence" by Nine Inch Nails

   Whenever Trent Reznor releases something, I pay attention. Simply based off the amount of care and obsessive attention to detail that goes into everything he does, I have huge amounts of respect and admiration for everything he has done, regardless of how much I do or don't like them. Everything from Nine Inch Nails albums to his other projects like How To Destroy Angels and his creepy-ass movie scores I'll eat up eagerly and pull apart slowly, like a pass-the-parcel - only it's never a nice present in the middle.
   Last year's EP Not The Actual Events was bloody awesome - a huge improvement from 2013's Hesitation Marks, and that trend has continued with Add Violence, the second album in a trilogy of EPs set to be completed later this year. It shows more restraint than the wonderfully messy Not The Actual Events, while maintaining the rage that was lost on the last couple of LPs (albeit simmering under the surface menacingly a lot of the time). "Less Than" picks up where the previous EP left off, and "This Isn't The Place" is a deliriously intense slow burn. Bring on EP number 3.

   Rating: A

   What's your favourite Nine Inch Nails album? (The correct answer is The Downward Spiral, of course) Let me know in the comments.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NOSTALGIA PICK #3: "The Glow Pt. 2" and "Mount Eerie" by The Microphones

   There aren't many artists that have been making consistently exciting music for as long as Phil Elverum has been under his various musical pseudonyms, the most notable being The Microphones and Mount Eerie, the latter being the second incarnation after The Microphones' Mount Eerie.  From experimental beginnings to rugged indie-folk to what was essentially Phil's black metal album in Black Wooden Ceiling  and back again, nothing he has done has felt like a re-tread of what had come before, but somehow he has managed to maintain an instantly recognisable sonic fingerprint across all his projects.    For me the peak moments in his expansive discography come in the form of 2001's The Glow Pt. 2 and 2003's Mount Eerie .      A saw an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney showing the work of Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima, which was a series of installations ruminating on life and death and the cycle it forms. All of the in...

1 YEAR LATER: "22, A Million" by Bon Iver

   Bon Iver's third studio album turns 1 in about a week (where did that year go?), so I thought it would be interesting to talk a bit about how my impressions of the album have changed - or how they haven't - over the last 12 months. When this album was released I was more excited than I think I ever have been to hear a new album. For Emma, Forever Ago is one of my all time favourites, and I love his self-titled second album too, so I had huge expectations for this album, but was also wary that expectations might ruin my experience of the music. This was particularly the case for 22, A Million , because it is unlike anything else Justin Vernon has released. There have been hints at this more processed, electronic direction previously, like the song "Woods" on the Blood Bank EP and occasional flourishes on Bon Iver , but 22, A Million is a drastic departure from the Bon Iver sound we had grown accustomed to at this point in time. Or at least, that's what I thought...