Hesitation Marks - Nine Inch Nails (2013)
I’m never sure if I should talk about Nine Inch Nails as if its a band, or Trent Reznor as the auteur. I suspect nothing gets released as a NIN record without Reznor approving of it.
Reznor is a guy who has grown a lot as a musician and writer over the decades, and he’s forged a pretty unique path through the mainstream while still retaining his overall aesthetic.
Hesitation Marks is a bit of a callback, in my mind, to the first NIN record, 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine. This is as heavy on programmed drums and layered synths as anything the band has turned in this century. But it shows how much more sophisticated the artist is compared to those early days.
A lot of classic NIN has build-ups and lulls, but it’s always what I call the jump scare: you’re going to get blasted with full spectrum metalcore noise any second now. This album has plenty of crescendo, but none of those explosions. It makes it even more overwhelming over the course of a whole run through it.
