NINE INCH NAILS AT 30: ​THE SLIP BY ALEX DAVIS

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...