Nine Inch Nails
Still

THE REVIEW

The discography career of Nine Inch Nails (or Trent Reznor, if you prefer) can be divided into two periods, which are linked by the sufficient/good "With Teeth" from 2005.

The second, more recent period starts in 2007 with "Year Zero" and ends the following year (meanwhile, two other albums were released) with "The Slip," a record that could easily sit between Korn's "Greatest Hits" and Metallica's "St. Anger."
The first period, however, begins with the 1989 debut "Pretty Hate Machine" and ends with the live album "And All That Could Have Been" in 2002, an album where one starts to feel the decline due to its lack of character and impact.

The first period is represented by peaks, by heights. Milestones such as "The Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile" constitute a significant slice of the musical heritage of the last decade. The first period introduced the world to Trent Reznor as a genius artist. The first period made Nine Inch Nails one of my favorite bands.

The album currently under consideration is a previously unreleased work, released in 2002 alongside the limited edition of the live "And All That Could Have Been." A collection of tracks taken from the first three albums plus a handful of unreleased ones, totaling nine tracks.
This album is an unplugged. An acoustic reinterpretation of the tracks where only Reznor's voice is accompanied by a piano and very few other instruments. I like to see "Still" as a kind of continuation of the colossal "The Fragile."

Because the atmosphere breathed is definitely that one. Distorted melancholy, mechanical emotion. An aggressive calm.

And perhaps precisely for this reason, the pieces that perform best are those taken directly from "The Fragile." "The Day The World Went Away" and "The Fragile" constitute the best, most successful parts of the collection. The songs are stripped of their original complex structures made of noise, electronic outbursts, and crazy distortions to leave the task of seducing the listener to Trent's whispers and touching piano notes. Yet remaining genuine, in fact, they reveal even more their emotional side. Defining even more clearly their soul.
"And All That Could Have Been" is an unreleased, icy, beautiful song. A dark shadow that steals your heart, that takes away your sleep. Not many songs give you this effect. The closing track is the wonderful "Leaving Hope." Only piano and guitar here, above a carpet of icy effects. It's like listening to the individual instruments in a valley, in autumn, with the strong wind stealing the notes, while gray clouds swallow the sunlight.

This is the last jewel, the last piece that closes the first part of Trent Reznor's artistic story. Who has transformed from a magnificent composer into a wrestler.

Recommended listening for those who want to delve deeper into the side that the artist revealed with "The Fragile."