Review by Alex Davis

Yes, I know the series is called Nine Inch Nails at 30, but as Trent Reznor's career has developed and grown we've seen numerous new directions for him as a musician. Back in 1989, who would have thought the mastermind behind Pretty Hate Machine or the furious stylings of Broken could have in time become an Oscar-winning soundtrack artist? While so many people hark back to those first four or five NIN albums, the Reznor we know today may well be a far more complete musician, with significantly more range than those earlier works. I suppose you could argue that point, but there have been numerous different sounds incorporated along the course of three decades.

Which brings us to Welcome Oblivion, which is not some sort of secret Nine Inch Nails album but the first – and to date only – full album from side project How To Destroy Angels. The project itself features Reznor alongside frequent collaborator Atticus Ross, as well as his wife Mariqueen as a lead singer – and before anyone starts throwing around claims of nepotism, her voice is actually really good, capturing just the sort of ethereal quality needed for this sort of album.

I've listened to this album through a number of times, and have honestly been chewing over what to say about if for some time. I think it's genuinely a good album, although is certainly far more ambient that anything under the NIN moniker – even Still or Ghosts I-IV feel more energetic and in your face by comparison. In some regards that's what makes it so ideal for a side project – it is different, and noticeably so. It's a record I can certainly put on, and perfectly happily have on, but it has significantly more the feeling of background music than I've encountered in anything else with the Reznor name on it. It's an album that doesn't quite fully hold my attention, but despite myself I will find I'm accidentally humming or singing along to bits I barely realise I'm hearing.

Maybe that makes it a great ambient album after all, but in reviewing it's hard to really pull apart track by track. I find that numerous songs sound similar, and sort of run together. While there's a lot here I like, there are only a few songs that jump out as a standout – Keep it Together is a solid track to lead with towards the front of the album, and Strings and Attractors is a deeply catchy number that almost veers into being poppy. And the song that first brought the band to my attention, A Drowning, is a stunningly good closer – in fact it's worth this album existing for that track alone.

While the first half is generally strong, I do also feel as though the second half lags quite badly, and there's a run of four or five tracks that don't feel at all special or memorable – I wouldn't go so far as to call them filler, but maybe a slightly different running order could have alleviated that. You could also argue that maybe it's just a little too long, and a few tracks less would maybe have worked better.
 
So yeah, it's a side project, and it's nothing like NIN ultimately. There are no doubt tracks of value here, but I don't find it as compelling as the main band. And that's not for want of trying – I've never been one to write anything off from these musical quarters, and a number of Reznor pieces have taken time to grow on me before entering firm favourite status. But no matter how much I listen to Welcome Oblivion it just doesn't seem to reach those heights. If you've always enjoyed the lighter and more ambient touches of NIN, then you might well get something out of this, but it's not industrial, it's not metal and it's not rock – it's an album that truly has its own identity. It would have been interesting to see what How To Destroy Angels might have served up next, but the members of the group have obviously been taken down other avenues since...

2008 was certainly a busy year for Nine Inch Nails – not a band renowned for churning out albums right on top of one another, they broke that formula heartily with this one coming only two months after Ghosts I-IV. They both share a similar release pattern, with their arrival being presaged only by a swift post saying '2 weeks!' on the Nine Inch Nails website. With that said, these are two very different albums, with the wordless dreamscapes of Ghosts I-IV largely replaced with a heavier sound that would be more akin to the NIN of the past.

This was an album that was recorded very quickly by all accounts – originally intended to be just an EP, this one was extended to a full album and constructed in just three weeks. In numerous interviews Reznor has described this one as an album built on instinct, angling for less polish than some previous works. While that does show, it's hard to say it's to the album's detriment – it has a great raw quality to it all the way through, and follows a fine tradition of Trent never quite pulling what you expect out of the bag.

What's interesting about this album to me at large is that it's not really what you would call industrial – the opening salvo of the record is much more rock-oriented, and the tracks are undeniably catchy and on a few listens will be whirling their way around your head for a long time. The fact this was nearly an EP also fascinates me, because the first six tracks feel like they hang together really well and could easily be one piece. The soft open of 999,999 is followed by the blast of 1,000,000 and everything for the next four tracks is driving and energetic, with Discipline being a personal standout from this run of tracks.
 
The album then drops into a far more gentle, atmospheric gear for a few tracks, taking in my favourite from the record – and possibly one of my favourite NIN tracks of all – Lights In The Sky. It's so simple and pared down, but Reznor's lyrics and delivery just add something to the sparse piano on this track. Corona Radiata is a track that is maybe a little overlong, but builds to a really satisfying finale, before the closing pair of the instrumentals of The Four of Us Are Dying and the sparky closing note of Demon Seed, the only track with a more rock/industrial angle in the closing section of The Slip.

In a career of thirty years, it's inevitable that a band and a performer will – and ideally should – change. And a part of me can understand why people hark back so much to the days of The Fragile and The Downward Spiral, but as life circumstances change so should artists change. Following The Fragile there was a run of albums that were all very different – the gentler approach of Still, the more radio-friendly flourishes of With Teeth, the electronic angles of Year Zero and the aforementioned ambient feel of Ghosts I-IV. And The Slip is as close to a proper rock album as NIN ever put out, so it's a slight tweak on the flavour of things once again.

But I feel like, whatever the approach, Trent Reznor is a performer who these days largely does what he wants creatively and whatever pleases him. If putting two free albums out in quick succession with so little fanfare isn't a marker of that, I don't know what is. As we come to look at the later years of NIN, there's absolutely a lot there well worth listening to – a comment that very much applies to The Slip also. Of all of their albums, I feel like this one has a real sing-along sort of quality, and for people new to the band it may even be one of the easiest NIN albums to access, the sort of thing you might hear in the mainstream today or in the recent past.

Suitably enough, next time around we'll be switching gears by looking a little at a piece of Reznor's work beyond NIN, so watch this space...