holy_diver's Full Review: The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails
Hindsight is 20/20. If only I weren’t so close minded in regards to electronic music when this release first came out back in 1999, well, then I would have been a rabid Nine Inch Nails fan for that much longer. At the time, the beeps, blips and fuzz that Trent Reznor was so fond of draping his songs in seemed far too cold and calculated to convey any real emotion or meaning. At best, I thought, you could only nod your head to his synthetic bombast. Electronics and Industrial music seemed to take no real talent - rarely was an actual instrument played. Rather, this “talentless” hack “produced” his music. Machines, synthesizers, sound programs, software; seldom was their anything acoustic or organic, so no real pulp.
These days, I realize the obvious error of my judgment, and the technical flaws of my prior generalizations (Many of the strange sounds created on this CD are made from insanely effect-laden guitars, and Reznor employs actual musicians to play actual instruments while touring live). If nothing else, and there is indeed many other talents at work here, the disjointed claustrophobia meticulously crafted on this brilliant double-album release took one hell of an “ear” to conceive - and a heart bloated and purple with self-pity and rage. Now, that might not be the “feel” your looking for in your music (and if that’s the case, stop reading this review and forget about this CD), but that is usually the point of a NIN release. And amidst an entire back-catalog of downers, The Fragile lays the lowest - the most deliberately broken and beaten sonic outing from a man who seems to break and beat himself down for the point of making the perfect music about depression.
Forget about the bottom of the barrel; the feelings on these two discs come from beneath the bottom of the sinkhole that opened up below that rusted drum of nothing. And from the collapsing black, songs like The Great Below emerge. Reznor-patented electronic minimalism at it’s finest, soft synths and delicate violins wash up to perfect poetic imagery amidst nearly whispered vocal tones. And of such soft tones, many of the albums interloping “instrumentals” are birthed. Critics have called these interludes irritating filler, but I find them to be under appreciated build-ups to The Fragile’s many emotive climaxes, and many of them contain powerful energy in and of themselves. Complication and Just Like You Imagined, both without vocals, nonetheless seethe with righteous syth-hooks that twirl about to the cacophony of rhythmic distortion and memorable, potent drum-beats. Both are grating but gratifying.
Pilgrimage and The Frail, two other instrumentals that grind and meander respectively, add impact to the real songs that follow them. No You Don’t’s catchy but crunching guitar riffs, coupled with an echoing storm of techno treble, strike one as far more hate-driven thanks to it’s predecessor. “You thought I’d take it on my knees, but not this time! NO YOU DON’T!”, Reznor belts out. Adding a torrent of static to his screams might irritate those less accustomed to the studio trickery prevalent in this genre, but for those of us who feel the rage, it just adds power. A whole lot of power.
Of Trent Reznor’s vocals, I’ll say that he isn’t the best singer in the world, but his tone is perfect for his “industrial-pop” style. We’re In This Together sees him strain a little, but then the rock aesthetic of the song warrants it. With chords, shredding and Gorahl-like hard-rock drums, taxed yelling probably was the best vocal approach to fill the bill. Either way, his unconventional vocal melodies make up for whatever range deficiency he may have.
On the above-mentioned point, The Wretched intrigued me immediately on first listen. I’ve heard people knock his lack of vocal hooks on this album, but I’m hard-pressed to find another musician as apt at singing a stream-of-thought rant with as much melody as he has. “The clouds will part, and the sky cracks open, and God himself will reach his f-ing arm through, just to push you down, just to hold you down.” A brief pause, and it continues: “Stuck in this whole, with the $h|t and the p|ss and it’s hard to believe it could come down to this.” To squeeze as much catchiness as he does out of that b*tch fest is a feat, no matter how effective the singer’s voice.
You have been catching that this is a double-disc release, right? That’s usually a problem - few musicians can pull this off without a lot of filler. Well, outside of the atrociously drawn-out industrial white-noise of Ripe (With Decay), this is a left and right sleeved fold-out with greatness on both sides. Somewhat Damaged fires up the left, launching it’s palpable fury from a totally unique sonic pallet of ugly off-chords, timber sawing samples, tumbling drum fills, and alien sounding synth riffs. It’s simple time-signature might be overused, but the song’s originality and conductive rage is undeniable. The Way Out is Through crescendo’s into a magnificent industrial-rock orgy, igniting the right disc. As is often the case, Reznor’s track placement is crucial and fluid - both tracks are attached at the waist to their followers, The Day The Whole World Went Away (Left), and Into the Void (Right).
Something about The Day The Whole World Went Away’s screeching, repetitive guitar chords almost seems punk-like to me. No, there are no blast-beats here, or annoying political rhetoric - in fact, the song is basically just amped-up, wildly distorted guitars blasting at you, sandwiching faintly sung poetics. Maybe it’s the simplicity and redundancy. Either way, Reznor shows his genius again be turning those two would-be flaws into the song’s greatest strengths - the wall of distortion created by the guitar is both painful and pained; exactly what is necessary to drive home the bleak lyrics. Contrastingly, Into the Void features funky bass synth and some sophisticated electronic leads, aspects that crop up later on in the right half of The Fragile.
While it was Reznor and crew’s more organic elements that originally drew me into NIN - showing that they were an industrial group open-minded enough to put the programming down for a second - it is often the grooving electronic swagger that carries the weight. Please induces body movement almost immediately with crazy fluctuations and glitched programming that fountains into furious turbines of cycling electronica. Starf*(kers Inc. has a simple but highly kinetic bass and chopped up percussion, with hacked and layered vocals that fit perfectly. The production is impeccable: Songs like these make me realize how the term “producer” can sometimes be synonymous with “musician.”
For a genre often mired in “cut and paste” tendencies, flooded with as many clones as punk, Nine Inch Nails sure knows how to branch out into uncharted territories. Although feint, I dare say The Big Come Down features an almost country twang. It may be buried beneath some awkward keyboards and some processed industrial chaff, but this contradiction pulls itself off perfectly, thanks to an infectious and gut-wrenching chorus.
All of this is not to say the man is not without his influences. His moments of metal-like romp are clearly of Ministry’s initial design, and the rickety wall of machinery at work on the heavily layered Underneath it All could have been inspired from any number of other industrial acts from the previous decade (Velvet Acid Christ, Skinny Puppy, :wumpscut:, who knows).
At the end of it all, there may be the stray moment of unnecessary fluff, but for a two disc release, The Fragile remains the most effective and consistently engaging double album I think I’ve ever heard. That alone earns it a solid five stars. One hell of a psychological parasite must have infected Trent during the five years it took to grow this brooding masterpiece. Many of us have been to the bottom of the barrel, to the deepest reaches of the pit, but the level of inspiration coursing throughout this album's length suggests a heart that was subject to something blacker than black. Just listen to the haunting soundscape, desperate moan, or the whining guitar of the otherwise beat-driven Even Deeper, and you’ll get a idea of what I‘m talking about.
Isolation, clinical depression, drug addiction - the man may have created and armed his own demons, but in a sick way, I’m glad those demons existed. In relating the pain to his listener's through music, we can become more familiar with how dark life can get, and move beyond.
That, and unchecked demons help create some killer music.
This double CD album The Fragile is very much a record meant to be listened to in one sitting. The album once again is performed with bombastic NIN mo...More at Buy.com
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