Album Review: Nine Inch Nails- Hesitation Marks

It’s 2013 and we are apparently excited about a new Nine Inch Nails record.

I guess it’s kind of fitting that a band that had such a huge impact on my life when I was very young would put out something new—a piece on my history with Nine Inch Nails was, really, the first thing I started writing for this blog, back in January, and was the first “long read” essay I posted.

Trent Reznor put Nine Inch Nails to bed in 2009—twenty years after their debut LP, Pretty Hate Machine. There was a big farewell tour, and in the wake of NIN’s exit, Reznor went on to start a new band with his wife, as well as his long time bro Atticus Ross. He and Ross also started working on film scores—winning some awards for their work on The Social Network, and not winning any awards for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Earlier this year, this new band he started, How to Destroy Angels, announced their first full length LP. Shortly after this announcement, this news was eclipsed by the fact that Reznor had gotten Nine Inch Nails back together in secret, and that a new album had been recorded, slated for release this fall.

For a band that is technically been at it for, like, 25 years, Hesitation Marks is their 8^th full length release—Reznor becoming most prolific in the band’s final years, after he, you know, stopped doing a ton of drugs. And for a contemporary album, Hesitation Marks sounds strangely antiquated and dated.

Nine Inch Nails were, at one point, synonymous with aggression—both 1992’s Broken EP and the magnum opus The Downward Spiral were just so goddamn angry. Angry guitars and drums. Angry screams and shouts. Angry lyrics about fist fucking and god being dead and no one caring about that and fucking like an animal, et. al. You get the idea. 1999’s excessive double LP The Fragile, written during the height of a substance abuse issue, was decidedly less aggressive lyrically—but musically it still maintained an edge.

Throughout the course of Hesitation Marks, it’s really obvious how few “real” instruments there are—sure there’s probably a guitar in there someplace, but the album relies almost exclusively on beeps and boops from synthesizers, and artificial drum beats. And I think that is the album’s tragic flaw—that, along with almost every song’s desperate need to give off some kind of “dancey” vibe, make this more in line with the hot mess synth pop on Pretty Hate Machine than anything else in the NIN canon.

Ok so maybe Trent Reznor’s not super angry anymore and he doesn't have a gigantic drug problem. And maybe as he cuts the sleeves off of his black t-shirt, and wraps both meaty fists around the microphone, he’d rather command a Gothy dance floor rather than a mosh pit. Hesitation Marks isn't necessarily a bad album, but it’s also not a great album. Overall, it’s relatively tame, and there are moments where it is incredibly restrained. Occasionally the restrained approach works—musically “Find My Way” is great. 

Lyrically, it’s unfortunately insipid.

Even more unfortunate is how lyrically insipid the rest of the album is—“All Time Low,” reaches, well, an all-time low of cringe worthy lines dropped by T. Rez.

In an interview about the record, Reznor touted it as being “fucking great.” Well of course he would. No one is going to make an album and then when promoting it say, “Well, we tried, but this sucks pretty hard you guys.” The real focus of the songwriting seems to be on crafting pop songs—something catchy with a refrain you can shout along to, like the first single, “Came Back Haunted.”

The album’s second single, and the song that precedes “Came Back Haunted,” is the quickly paced “Copy of A.” The two songs are so similar that the first ten minutes of this album are like a non-stop dance party.

The album is relatively cohesive in that style, save for a few head scratching moments. The halfway point is marked by the poppiest thing Reznor has ever attached his name to—“Everything” is driven by a tight, chugging bass line, and dare I say it—by a “fun” sounding drum track. The song is so un-Nine Inch Nails, it almost seems like a joke at first. But it’s not a joke. This is a real song that was written and recorded.

Hesitation Marks is incredibly top heavy—the pacing slows just a little bit on all those beats after the back half starts. However, one of the album’s best songs, “Various Methods of Escape,” comes in early into the second act. Unassuming during the verses, the refrain is huge—but not like it’s trying too hard to become an anthem. Handclaps, strummy guitars, and Reznor hitting things up in a higher, rarely used range, allow this to be one of the more unique tracks on the album.

Those beats, whether slow or fast, also start to sound really samey after a while. The record clocks in at just a little over an hour, and each track is like, five or six minutes. Almost every song starts out with just a simple, artificial beat—then synths and other futuristic sounding noises are piled on top of it. It’s a formula that wears out its welcome very early on and exhausts the good will of the listener by the time the obligatory “outro” track arrives.

It’s really easy to make the joke that I've “got some hesitation about Hesitation Marks.” But it’s kind of not a joke. In the end, I'm left wondering what the purpose of this record is. It’s not like Nine Inch Nails, as an active band, have been gone for SO long that they need reintroduction. Trent is pushing 50 at this point, so he’s obviously mellowed out, and maybe that’s where I'm struggling with it. As much as I have outgrown Nine Inch Nails as a band I actively listen to and identify with, they will forever live in my memory as being loud and angry and menacing. This “softer” side, if you will, feels odd and phoned in to me and I identify with it even less. I’m not so much concerned that this album is the sound of someone having a midlife crisis and chose to work through it using keyboards. I am concerned, however, that if Reznor’s musical aesthetic is ever shifting, that he’s using the name “Nine Inch Nails” in an attempt at instant recognition for whatever he is peddling at the time.

Hesitation Marks drops on September 3rd, via Columbia Records, and is available in multiple formats with multiple covers- standard compact disc, deluxe compact disc, vinyl, digital, and special "audiophile" editions with alternate mastering.