My Amazon Reviews: Nine Inch Nails "Fixed"

Breakdown, Make Up
2 Out Of 5 Stars

Released as a companion piece to the already abrasive "Broken," Nine Inch Nails' "Fixed" is almost as caustic. Six songs (five remixes) are given a Cuisinart of studio trickery and often pair little resemblance to their sources. For instance, the remix of "Gave Up" tears apart the vocal track into some sort pastiche and stutters most of of the song into disconcerting fragments. "Throw This Away" is a remix of both "Suck" and "Last" that manages to not sound anything like their origins. "Fist F***" is one of two mixes given to "Wish," just with a nastier title and a lot more guitar and no actual use of the actual title.

One of Reznor's best (and most vitriolic) songs, "Happiness In Slavery" is also given a double dose, fist with a semi-standardized remix like you might have expected given the multiple remixes he released from "Pretty Hate Machine." It's almost a dub remix with more industrial sounds. The second, "Screaming Slave," is just what its title would reveal it to be. A total sandblaster musically, with a ton of agonized screams punctuating towards the end. Probably the least interesting track on "Fixed."

"Broken" is obviously the better of the two EP's as it represents Reznor's original vision of the songs, but "Fixed" makes an interesting curio. Reznot would tread this road again, soon after "The Downward Spiral" was released, a near full length LP of remixes called "Further Down The Spiral" would appear. I'd call "Fixed" an EP for completists only.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Nine Inch Nails "Hesitation Marks"

Maturity Hate Machine
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Things must be going pretty swell in the Trent Reznor household. The man seems to have found some sort of domestic bliss, down to having his wife collaborate on the How To Destroy Angels project. He now has Grammy and Oscar trophies for the mantlepiece. He's so happy that, a few years after he declared Nine Inch Nails over, he's resurrected the name and put out the almost chipper "Hesitation Marks." While hardly a classic NIN album, it doesn't deserve the angry fanboy one/two star reviews. Let's address why "Hesitation Marks" is a good NIN album.

Reznor stopped using his studio time for anger management years ago, probably starting at "With Teeth." Saying that the guy's not pissed off anymore is obvious to anyone with an attention span of more than one album. He's been making music as craftsmanship as he sees fit for a long time now. Hence the politics of rocking "With Teeth," the concept album and viral campaign for "Year Zero," the ambient soundtrack precursor of "Ghosts" and his "thank you" to his fans, the so-so "The Slip," then gave it away as a download freebie. Angry young men don't sit down with movie rough cuts and devise soundtracks/scores. "Hesitation Marks" reflects all of these aspects. In fact, it's more like revisionism of his earlier work. "Hesitation Marks" sounds an awful lot like a grown man's look back at "Pretty Hate Machine."

"Copy Of A" takes this notion head on. Complete with a guest guitar run from Lindsey Buckingham (yes, the guy from 70's megastars Fleetwood Mac for you newbies), Reznor digs right in:

"I am just a copy of a copy of a copy
Everything I say has come before
Assembled into something into something into something
I am never certain anymore."

He's in on the whole idea. That's why when the haunting "All Time Low" brings to mind images from "The Downward Spiral," Reznor is looking at the paranoia from a man who's already been to the bottom and can now see what abyss looks like from a safe distance. The atmospheric guitar from one time King Crimson/Bears/Bowie guitarist Adrian Belew makes me wish Belew could have found his place comfortably in the NIN framework, as he's always been an asset to any band who needs their guitars coming in from left field. Belew's appearance here, along with Buckingham's (or for that matter, super-bassist Pino Palladino) is clear evidence that Reznor is looking after the perfection he desires in these songs.

I can't say that "Hesitation Marks" is all peaches and debris, as the song's tendency to be reminiscent of earlier, classic work can be distracting. That doesn't mean the album is bad, nor does it qualify the album as not enjoyable. Trent Reznor has every right to be happy. It also gives him the leeway to say (as he does in "Everything"), "I have tried everything, and I've survived everything." Good on him, and lucky for us. "Hesitation Marks" quietly rages on, doing so in a manner befitting a man pushing 50.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Two "Voyeurs"

Who put all this dirt in to my machine?
3 Out Of 4 Stars

One of the odder curios in my collection, "Voyeurs" by Two was Rob Halford taking some time to reinvent himself after exiting Judas Priest. Also coinciding with his coming out as gay, "Voyeurs" was nothing like Halford had done in the past. Teaming up with Nine Inch Nails' Tren Reznor, Mayiln Manson guitarist John 5, and letting Reznor executive produce with a hand from Bob Marlette and Skinny Puppy's Dave Ogilvie, this sounded more techno-metal than his operatic heavy metal howling with Priest. Even though that combination sounds like it should be a total trainwreck, "Voyeurs" works most of the time.

"I Am A Pig" was the lead single, and it sounds more like a NIN song than most anything else on the disc. Halford lowers his voice into a gravelly growl while overblown mechanical rumbles keep the beat. There was a rarely seen video created by porno director Chi Chi LaRue that featured nobody from the band but lots of kinky flesh in an SM dungeon context. If Halford and Reznor wanted to blow away any expectations of Priest fans, this was certainly the way to do it. (The song also wound up on the soundtrack to the 1999 cult horror movie "Idle Hands.") Then there's "Hey Sha La La," which attempts to weld a singalong hook (the title) to the spooky grind. The other noteworthy song is "Stutter Kiss," which uses NIN's typical whisper to a scream vocal style to good effect.

Those are the highlights. "Voyuers" tended to repeat itself about midway in, and not in a beneficial manner. I also found it amusing that this industrial style of metal-making would pop up again on Alice Cooper's "Brutal Planet" about a year later, and there are times here when Halford sounded like The Coop. While Two was definitely trying to sound like their own group and Halford sounded like he was having pretty good time not being the Metal God for 11 songs, apparently few consumers agreed. "Voyeurs" was a commercial stiff and has since developed a cult following among fans of Halford and Reznor (like yours truly), leaving no further opportunities for Two to expand on these ideas.

     

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "The Social Network"

The Rich are Just Like You and Me...Only Much Younger  
4 Out Of 5 Stars

David Fincher has a knack for seedy underbellies, and he finds a juicy one to stab in "The Social Network." Working from a wordy script from Aaron Sorkin and a bravura performance from Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg), he boils the creation of the most successful internet site down to friendship, betrayal and insecurity, with side servings of jealousy and greed. It's the same old story you've heard a million times before, just updated for the 21'st century.

Eisenberg shows the kind of detached brilliance of the uber-nerd stereotype, and he makes Zuckerberg into a believably arrogant genius. His zingers are cruelly on target, even though many of them are delivered at deserving targets. (It also is worth noting that had these things been said in an actual legal deposition, the speaker would have been escorted away.) However, you see essentially a hurt young man whose brilliance doesn't impress many folks because he is an overbearing ween. This fact is set up in the brutally dark comedic exchange at the movie's opening, where Zuckerberg is trying to score points with a girl, all the while continually berating her. One drunken revenge hacking later, and the seeds of Facebook are planted.

But it is that isolated anger that fuels "The Social Network." When the spoiled rich Winklevoss twins (played with a bit of trickery by one Armie Hammer) are trying to sue on the grounds of intellectual theft, Zuckerberg snaps at the lawyer representing them that his thoughts are "back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing." Then to drive his irritation at the attorney home, he sneers "Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"

There are snakes all over this grassy web, all trying to get to Zuckerberg's money, and at the same time, Zuckerberg stabs one of the only people to show him kindness, his co-founder (Andrew Garfield) Eduardo Saverin. It's hard to comprehend Zuckerberg's reasoning for trying to jam his one friend out of the business, although the snake oil spewed by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake, who seems to be playing himself) seems a likely explanation. The way these three triangulate forms the emotional core of the film, with Parker playing demonic mischief maker, trying to grease his way into a spotlight that he envies Eduardo for having. The rapid-fire back and forth between all these spokes still centralize back on Zuckerberg, and "The Social Network" turns on how much you either believe the story or how much you can tolerate two hours of listening to these wealthy but morally bereft children spearing each other.

My Amazon Reviews: Halford "Resurrection"

Judas is Rising,
 4 Out Of 5 Stars

When Rob Halford decided to mount his Harley and leather up for a return to metal, he did so in grand fashion. "Resurrection" roars in on a glorious racket of double-time drums, twin lead guitars and defiant lyrics. Sound familiar? If you nodded and emphatic Yes to that question, you'll be wild for this CD. It was the follow-up to his Nine Inch Nails collaborative project, Two (which I have to admit, I really liked, if the public otherwise ignored it).

Rob's nom-de-band works his own personality and well known past to great effect. The title track opens the disc with his demonic operatic howl multi-tracked, just in case you were wondering what direction "Resurrection" was going to head in. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden does a bit of reinforcement by co-writing and sing with Rob on "The One You Love To Hate." There's even an ode to moderation in the surprising "Slow Down."

For the most part, though, Halford the band is delivering the goods you'd expect. I picked up the remastered version, which sounds killer. It also sounds like it was recorded in 2010 as opposed to the original release of 2000. "Resurrection" has held up really well over a decade, and having wrestled the rights to his non-Priest catalog back, it now comes direct from Rob's own private MetalGod records (IE: it's his business now, as opposed to a monolithic record company). Worth getting again for that reason alone, and worth getting the first time if you passed on it at the turn of the century.

      

My Amazon Reviews: Nine Inch Nails "The Fragile"

The Anger and The Fragile

4 Out Of 5 Stars

It may have taken Trent Reznor almost 6 years to make a proper album after The Downward Spiral, which meant he had a long time to store up the vitriol that is his musical stock and trade. As you listen to the sprawling near two hour opus that is "The Fragile," you realize that Reznor has mastered the art of the alienation; over and over the words "cold," "decay," "damage" or the usual four letter 'obscenity' that starts with F appear. And the template has been chiseled into granite, with bubbling minor key softness giving way to explosive, violent guitar blasting. "The Fragile" is despondency on a par with Pink Floyd.

In the same vein as Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nails rails against the world that makes him famous but fails to give unto him anything good. There's plenty of anxiety and anti-social attitude, plus Reznor's own dour perceptions. "The Fragile" not only attacks you with its blistering aural onslaught, it seeps into those demented cracks in your mind that you thought were closed off to this kind of manipulation.

A lot of that has to do with Reznor's studio acumen; the guy knows how to structure sound like few others. It is one of the reasons "The Fragile" is more a grower album than an instant classic. Lots of little bits of construction reveal themselves as time goes by. It's a candy-coated hand grenade that goes off with songs like "Star-bleepers Incorporated" (Reznor's poisoned rant at former friend Marilyn Manson) or "Into The Void" and its danceable beats. Those are the two most obvious songs here, but the bulk of "The Fragile" will twist into you and stay there, as long as you have the patience to treat it over time.