 After their popular return with Hesitation Marks, it would be another few years before we saw anything further from Nine Inch Nails – for a band whose discography is littered with fairly lengthy gaps, this three year hiatus was nothing unusual. And of course that’s certainly not to say that Trent Reznor was on a hiatus either, providing soundtracks for Gone Girl and Before The Flood in the intervening years. But anything new from NIN is always an exciting time for fans such as myself, so when rumours of a new EP emerging – the first of an EP trilogy, no less – I was nothing short of giddy. Not The Actual Events is the opener in a trio of recent Nails that will take us home for our year-long retrospective. NTAE starts a thread of the world not quite being what it seems – the listener being somebody asleep and waiting, needing to be awoken – that would continue on to Add Violence. In fact, you could argue that concept goes further back to Right Where it Belongs from the With Teeth record. And as such what you have here has a certainly dreamlike – and at times nightmarish – quality. Branches/Bones kicks off on a sparky and energetic note, and follows a trend of recent NIN albums using Track 1 as a small taster rather than launching in with anything too substantial. It runs under two minutes, and offers up some pretty discordant guitars blended with softer sections to good effect. Dear World is a different creature entirely, launching into a more electronic sound akin to what we found on the previous album in Hesitation Marks. It’s certainly atmospheric, and Reznor’s quiet vocals lean into that sense very nicely. I can’t quite make all the lyrics out, but that seems fitting somehow for this particular track. She’s Gone Away is one of my favourite tracks, apparently written specifically for Twin Peaks at the request of David Lynch – and boy does it sound like it was created with that in mind. The band performed the song on an episode of the series too, and that’s well worth checking out as a video on Youtube. This is grim, moody and pared down – one of my preferred tracks from NIN’s recent output, and the one I find myself coming back to most from NTAE. The closing salvo of the album is significantly heavier, with the rumbling bass of The Idea of You pitched against a heavier chorus and producing an enlivening effect. Then we come to another fave from this piece, our finale, Burning Bright. I have no idea what the guitar is tuned down to, or what effect has been pulled on it, but from the opening this one is just brutally low and rumbles along wonderfully to conclude the EP. It’s fair to say that this one is different again from its predecessor in Hesitation Marks, and won a lot of praise for moving back towards elements of the band’s sound in the 1990s and 2000s. With that said, for those similarities, it also bring something more to the mix in terms of reflection and atmosphere, as well as hanging together thematically with its questions of reality and fantasy. It’s a thoughtful album put together by what these days feels like a more thoughtful performer. And while it might not please all those fans who’ve been following NIN for a long time, it’s distinctly got their sound and their feel to it – or maybe it’s more a matter of the mood it captures? Next time around we’ll be coming to part 2 of the trilogy, Add Violence, before wrapping things up with the final piece of the trifecta in Bad Witch.   |
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