Nine Inch Nails
The Fragile (Nothing)
by Brian Varney
Well, the mad clamor to smooch Trent Reznor’s bloated ass is certainly something to behold. Seems like you can’t look at the magazine section without seeing his face or reading about what a vital artist he is. Since my own take on Nine Inch Nails is slightly different, I’ll share it with you. I can still remember the first time I heard them. I was in high school and I started hearing their name when they were on the first Lollapalooza. I was intrigued and I asked about them. I finally found someone who’d heard them, and he told me, “Oh, you’ll love them. They’re really loud and pissed off and there’s tons of noisy guitars.” “Cool,” I thought. I borrowed Pretty Hate Machine from someone and prepared myself to be slayed. Considering the build-up it’d been given, you can imagine my disappointment. “Dude,” I told the guy who’d promised the world, “it’s a disco album.” The other NIN stuff didn’t do much to dissuade me.
So now Trent’s made his magnum opus, his double CD masterpiece, his The Wall. Listening to this album, it became apparent for the first time just how much classic ’70s hard rock there is in this stuff (it’s no surprise that Bob Ezrin helped out on this album). Most of the album’s intended power relies on the old dynamics-as-rock-power trick (quiet verse, loud chorus) invented by Black Sabbath and repopularized for the alternakiddies by Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, which would be fine were it not for one small problem: the lack of good tunes. I have no problem with the whisper-to-a-scream thing, but it won’t work if you don’t have Nirvana’s tunes or Black Sabbath’s riffs, and The Fragile has neither. Listening to The Fragile, it seems that more time was spent conceiving the unusual sound effects and between-song transitions than was spent conceiving the songs. Sure, he stumbles onto a coupla catchy things over the course of the album, but fuck, damn near anyone could come up with something over the course of two CDs (over 100 minutes) that took five years to write. And what little that’s enjoyable is all but snuffed out by the “Oh, I’m so miserable ’cause nobody loves me and stuff” attitude in which the whole thing is swathed. I’d imagine it gets pretty tough to stay pissed when you get everything you want handed to you on a silver platter. Anyway, it’s pretty tough for me to take seriously. I heard a quote from Reznor where he said something like, “Well, I had a successful career and a lot of money, but I didn’t have spiritual satisfaction.” To quote Denis Leary, “Join the fucking club!” I’m not fully satisfied with my life either. So where’s my recording contract and Rolling Stone cover story?
