Nine Inch Nails has 20 plus years in the industry, and show no signs of ever slowing down, creating music that different generations since their inception have loved and rocked out to. As one of the legion of fans I don’t know if I can be completely objective but I will try.

The Slip – as the new album is named starts with a short intro named 999,000 at a minute and a half (roughly) it starts with a quiet dreamy and mechanical voice slowly crescendos into the next song 1,000,000 which jumps right into a heavy electronic guitar line. This track is Nine Inch Nails at its core, heavy electronic rock with trent belting out the lyrics, and backup vocal tracks, I definitely don’t like the choice of vocal layovers at the end, It feels disjointed and out of place. The next track Letting you keeps along the same lines, increasing the overall tempo. Discipline the single from The Slip is a great catchy tune and its obvious that it was meant for radio play. Echoplex is a good track but compared to the other songs it might just be forgettable, I will hold my judgement completely until I’ve heard it 20 times or so. Head Down has a great feel to it, and brings the tempo of the album down to a more brooding feel. Lights in the Sky is a soft melodic song, which if my guess is correct must be Trent on the piano reminiscent of the acoustic version of Something I Can Never Have from Pretty Hate Machine. Corona Radiata is a quiet Electronica instrumental track, my first reaction as I was listening to it on the plane back from San Francisco was that it reminded me of something off of a Stephen King movie, which can be a little disconcerting while on an airplane! The Four of Us are Dying, another instrumental track is less haunting but still a decent enough track, to tell you the truth this one just felt like a bit of a filler, it might just be that the instrumentals were right next to each other. Finally, Demon Seed, finishes the album strong with the same hard electronic rock sound.

Overall this new release by Nine Inch Nails, outside of the statement being made by Trent to the record companies and the fact that it was released for free to the fans, is well worth it even if they were charging full price, and I think that at a future date they will set a price to purchase with physical media, and I expect quite a few people to do so even if they already have downloaded the free option.

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Nine Inch Nails – The Slip [free to download]

Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine