Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

Bland and generic rock with some mildly catchy tunes

That's the best way to describe this album. I am not a die-hard Nine Inch Nails fan, but I was utterly captivated by The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. The Fragile also includes some of my favorite songs of all time, number one being "The Great Below"

So it seems Reznor's abandoned the innovative, haunting style of The Fragile for something more upbeat, down to earth, and average.

There's very little in the album beyond typical guitar, bass, drums, which is the standard for rock, but after the sort of things Trent Reznor has done before, comes as a disappointment---with greater style and innovation comes greater expectations.

And the album is about as MTV-friendly as a NIN album could possibly be, with very little substance to any of the songs to make them in any way remarkable from one another. "The Hand that Feeds" has a very catchy beat, but when you break it down, it amounts to little more than the exact same 5 note guitar riff repeated throughout the entire song paired with some mostly unintelligible and droning lyrics.

In my previous experience, NIN seemed to be a fusing of art, music, and innovation. This album seems to pull back on all three of them, perhaps for the money. July 5, 2008

every song is exactly the same

well, no, it's not really, but it may as well be.

here's the thing, in retrospect this is clearly a transitional album. this is trent reznor playing with a band trying to find his sound, trying to get back on track after the commercial failure of "the fragile". he's trying to focus and update his sound, without losing any of his edge. in many ways he accomplishes this, with modern-sounding production and an attempt at balancing noise with dance beats and catchy hooks.

the problem is, he doesn't get there. he's experiementing with different sounds and ideas trying to find what works, but only a few succeed. listening to the follow-up "year zero" you can see where "with teeth" was heading. the political ideas, the post-apocalyptic imagery, the more conceptual and less personal songs are the trails he followed to greater success on "year zero". here he still has holdover angsty-diary tracks that say the same thing as always in less interesting ways.

"every day is exactly the same" works best, while "the hand that feeds" worms into you despite being annoying and uninspired. "only" rips off "down in it" without showing any growth. the rest of the album has its moments, but often it sounds forced, as though trent is trying too consciously to make a nine inch nails album. despite flashes of brilliance, "with teeth" sounds like any of the flash-in-the-pan nine inch nails wannabes that came and went in the 90s. thankfully, trent avoided their fate and crafted a brilliant follow up. if any nin album can be skipped and forgotten, this is it. May 30, 2008

Disappointing to a fan

I was so happy with my NIN collection (Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, Downward Spiral, Further Down the Spiral, and Year Zero), I decided to expand it and bought With Teeth. To be honest, I think I could do without it. I don't think it deserves the four-star rating it has, or even a three-star rating for that matter. After giving it a couple of full listens and listening to some favorites a few more times, even the songs I initially liked started making me ill.

Though NIN is known for dark themes, the main theme of With Teeth seems to be nothing but self-pity. I could relate to more songs on the other albums, but With Teeth drones on about incomprehensible personal issues. I just can't dig Trent's whiney voice to music that is less sophisticated and less melodic than his other work. On the whole, it all sounds just very immature and self-centered. I have no idea why this album got popular.

After listening on and off for almost 15 years, I still enjoy my other NIN albums and I quickly became almost addicted to Year Zero. If you really like old NIN too, you probably won't like With Teeth.

By the way, the DVD content doesn't make it any better of a value. It's more like just a promo for all the rest of his albums, which I thought was quite lame. March 29, 2008

Not my favorite NIN album, but still very good.

I took a while to warm up to this album, but now that I have I've been listening to it for weeks. There are some strange tracks, but there are usually some strange tracks on NIN albums. If you're a NIN fan, you should have this album. I already had the music since the band leaked the whole thing before it was released, but the artwork is worth $10. The strange anti-piracy warnings are reason enough to purchase this. Conclusion - it's not Pretty Hate Machine, but it's a major improvement over The Fragile. (No offense to anyone that likes that one - I just can't get into more than 3 or 4 tracks on that one.) October 25, 2007

Another excellent nin cd!!!

NIN keep on giving us the best of his productions, the 5.1 sound quality is the best, the extras are good, this a collection piece, you oughtta have it!!!! May 9, 2007

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