Nine Inch Nails
The Slip

I wanted to wait a few months after the release of this "Halo 27" by NIN before daring to review it. I wanted to listen to it well, many times. I wanted to read the lyrics of the songs and understand them. I wanted to listen to how every single instrument sounds. I wanted to chew, digest, and belch this CD. In short, I wanted to investigate whether Trent Reznor is truly finished and sold to the BZ as many of you claim, or not. In the end, my answer is NO!

My judgment is that this is the best album (vocal) of the 2000s trilogy by Nine Inch Nails. The parentheses (vocal) mean that in my opinion, the best remains the quadruple "GHOST," but I fully realize that 36 purely instrumental and electro-industrial tracks are a probable threat of orchitis for most. Actually, even for my jewels in certain situations, but let's say that I carefully separate my "chamber music" (lounging in front of the PC or while reading a book) from leisure music. NIN has always had an honorary chair reserved for their new releases, up there in the Olympus of my top 10 favorite bands. "Ghost" was therefore a kind of catharsis for Reznor. "Did you criticize me because "With Teeth" was too user-friendly? Did you break my balls because "Year Zero" was too rock? Then take 36 instrumental songs, with an album practically without a commercial launch, without marketing, devoid of a related tour, downloadable only for free from my site." Album for niche listeners, indeed. Even this "The Slip" is downloadable for free from the site, in the name of an anti-record company crusade that I fully support. "The Slip" is, in my opinion, the sum of the previous albums from the 2000s. There are both very (perhaps too) catchy pieces as on "With Teeth"; very intense, almost hardcore pieces like on "Year Zero"; but there are also instrumental and industrial tracks like on "Ghost I-IV."

Nothing new under the sun really, Reznor's cliché is rather standardized by now, but it's a balanced and very well-played record. It satisfies more or less all the conflicting souls of Trent Reznor’s usual listeners and reaches heights of judgment well above the first two albums mentioned, which I have extensively criticized in my respective reviews, although they too are not devoid of some gems. When I write a review for the historical bands that I love the most, I always struggle to chase away from my mind the demons of comparison with what they were and did 10, 15, or 20 years ago. But I also believe that we must have the intellectual honesty to understand that a musician who has been on the scene for so many years, writing so many rivers of notes and verses, and playing the same songs for countless concerts around the world, inevitably feels the need to change at some point in their career. Those who do not change (Iron Maiden, Slayer, AC/DC, Pearl Jam, etc...) have something inhuman within them. Inevitably, they become tiresome, weary, and tarnish their creative verve, becoming repetitive. Of course, it's commendable in terms of "loyalty to their fans" and "consistency to a genre," but let us ask ourselves: "what kind of artist is it"? A bit flat, isn't it?

Why have the Queen, Madonna, Depeche Mode, Metallica, David Bowie (regardless of whether you like them or not) entered the history of music? Because they have been able to interpret the "moods," feelings, acoustic needs, trends, politics, and the concept of love of the eras they traversed. Ranging from dance to rock, from electronics to grunge, from metal to pop. Is artistic eclecticism and transformation thus a mortal sin, or a virtue? Having reached the second lustrum of my third decade, now divorced from the "stadium fan concept" (with the t-shirt of my favorite metal band even in the high school gym to play basketball), I lean towards the second hypothesis. And so, does one get dumber with age or mature? Can you improve by worsening? I believe these questions apply in our small world as listeners as much as they do for the great rock stars, who perhaps in truth will ask themselves, while sipping a cocktail in a Hollywood pool among eager Lithuanian women and peddlers arriving on flying carpets: "How can I change without appearing like a sellout?"

Very difficult, indeed. David Bowie was the undisputed champion of transformation, defining himself as a sellout, making his vices his strength with unparalleled irony. In his "small" way, which is not so small for an artist who, after Ministry, brought to the global audience a genre that is the epitome of the anti-song concept, the good Trent Reznor, in my opinion, succeeded. I would not, therefore, want to read the usual tedious comments on this review of mine in the style of: "Nin died with The Downward Spiral." At least try to listen to this CD without prejudice, as if a wave were reaching your still-immaculate auditory shoreline. And then tell me if it's not true that "1,000,000" is a great hard-rock piece with electronic contaminations (and isn't Josh Freese one of the best drummers around?); if "Letting you" doesn't have a guitar part by Robin Finck (who, after being fooled by Axl Rose as Slash's heir, returned to the fold with his tail between his legs) that's amazing! Ask yourself if it's not brilliant to produce the most commercial piece of the album, "Discipline," mocking Village People in the video and writing a self-ironic text about their old affection for dance music of the past; ask yourselves if when at minute 1:14 of "Echoplex," the classic drums and bass enter on the intro of only guitar-drum base and voice, you don't think it's one of the best electro-rock pieces since "Violator" by DM?

Ask yourself if "Head Down" isn't a track with the swing of the early NIN albums? Allow yourself to be carried away by the melancholy of "Lights in the Sky," finding yourselves lost in the dream of a piano playing on the shore of an ocean screaming cold waves in the storm, confirming that Reznor is a great composer, pianist, and guitarist but not a great singer from a purely vocal point of view. Yet he has developed a vocal technique that is pleasant and appreciable in any case. You will then find yourselves enveloped by the two instrumentals of desperate sadness, "Corona Radiata" and "The Four of Us Are Dying." You will finish listening to the CD with "Demon Seed," where the sounds of the excellent Italian keyboardist Alessandro Cortini (who lately has somewhat lost sight of his solo project "Modwheelmood" due to commitments with NIN) reach excellence.

Only two criticisms: a great lineup that I can't wait to appreciate live with the exception of the new bassist, Justin Meldal, who even seeing him live on video playing with a pick seems too anonymous and linear to me and makes me miss the good Twiggy Ramirez. Finally, I share Reznor's choice not to record in the studio all the parts of guitar, bass, piano, and keyboards as usual, but the production of the acclaimed Alan Moulder personally doesn't fully convince me. If you listen to the tracks recorded live on the DVD, they are more enjoyable, much more rock, and more "real." The whole, given also by the software programming by Atticus, is slightly annoying and "plastic," in the search for a unique sound that sometimes goes too far into the "mix," where it's hard to distinguish the guitar from the computerized effects. After investigating the latest effort of Nine Inch Nails, I bid farewell to you, to explore further with my muse the concept of a Lithuanian by the Hollywood pool just expressed, which in the second part of this impromptu prolix review has quite disturbed my mind, in a healthy constructive envy towards the rock stars of every age.