The Slip : Nine Inch Nails : Review : Rolling Stone

"Is my viciousness/losing ground, ground, ground, ground, ground?" croaks Trent Reznor on "Discipline," the propulsive new single from Nine Inch Nails' The Slip. It's a question more than a few rock stars are asking themselves these days. Pop divas and hip-hop producers command the musical zeitgeist. The iPod long ago made albums, those supreme rock-era icons, seem as dowdy as Victorian whalebone skirts. In these dire times, what's an old-fashioned Dionysian with a guitar and a messiah complex to do to stay relevant?

Give away his music for free, apparently. "This one's on me," reads the note on Nine Inch Nails' Website, where visitors can download The Slip in a variety of file formats — for nary a red cent. Reznor has been sticking it to the Man with distribution gambits for a while now. In 2007, he urged fans to "steal" NIN's Year Zero online to avoid getting gouged by his then-label, Interscope, and stashed USB drives containing "clues" to the whereabouts of additional music in the bathrooms of concert venues on his European tour. And in March, free from his Interscope contract, he released the instrumental opus Ghosts I-IV under a multitiered payment system. But The Slip is his most radical stunt yet. He has issued the album under a Creative Commons license, which allows listeners to remix the songs as they see fit, provided they do so for noncommercial purposes and credit the results to Nine Inch Nails. It's an impressively democratic, fourth-wall-shattering gesture coming from one of music's biggest control-freak auteurs. In the future, all of us will be Trent Reznor for 15 minutes.

Of course, there are still a few moves best left to Reznor himself. Like bellowing a death wish — "Put the gun/In my mouth/Close your eyes/Blow my fucking brains out" — through a squall of distortion over monstrous power chords. That moment comes in "1,000,000," one of a handful of aggro howls in The Slip that's sure to please devotees. The most torrid of these is "Head Down," a typical Reznor lament — "This is not my face/This is not my life" — that keeps getting swallowed up by drifting billows of digital fuzz.

Although it's not a pure headphones album like Ghosts I-IV, The Slip rewards intensive listening: Check out the varying colors and gradations of buzz in the chorus of "Head Down"; the push and pull of the clanking beat that powers the album closer, "Demon Seed." In Reznor's infernal visions, the devil is in the sonic details.

Stylistically, The Slip finds Reznor on familiar turf. There are flashes of the symphonic electronica he dabbled with on 1999's The Fragile, some snoozy ambient mood pieces like those on Ghosts I-IV and a couple of the prettiest, stateliest ballads Reznor has recorded. (The gorgeous "Lights in the Sky" finds him singing in a near-whisper over tolling piano chords.) Nine Inch Nails have always had a danceable side — never more so than on 1994's "Closer," which mashed up Anglophile synth rock with gutbucket American funk — but "Discipline" is the closest Reznor has ever come to disco, right down to a splashing high-hat, boosted way up in the mix, Giorgio Moroder-style. And, of course, there are eardrum-rending yowlers like "Letting You," a dystopian vision of the War on Terror: "You train us how to act/You keep the fear intact/The imminent attack . . . We are letting you get away with it."

That song may remind listeners of Year Zero, Reznor's anti-Bush concept album, but the protest rants here are mostly personal. The Slip is, in other words, vintage Nine Inch Nails. After the recent thematic and instrumental excursions, Reznor is back to railing at high volume against his usual targets: life, fate and that perennial bugaboo, his own rot-caked soul.

Reznor came of age during the alt-rock explosion of the 1990s, and his innovation was to give that musical movement's rampant angst — the dread and daddy issues that the grunge rockers were always moaning about — a high-tech makeover. He turned Gen X self-pity into the computer blues. Indeed, today it appears that Reznor has reached the grizzled-bluesman phase of his career. He keeps himself in the news as a digital-distribution renegade, but musically he is looking more and more classicist, juggling old tropes, burrowing deeper into longtime obsessions, honing his craftsmanship and virtuosity. For listeners who like their music loud and fierce and pissed off at just about everything, there aren't too many better options than The Slip. Plus, the price is right.

JODY ROSEN

(Posted: May 29, 2008)

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Give us your review of The Slip

Review 1 of 9

5of 5 Stars

NIN always comes with very different and singular albums, and this is no exception. The album is very noisy and at the same time more clear to the first time listeners. It's really a great record with some very deep and personal lyrics. The vocals are not so powerful as other albums like: The Fragile and With Teeth, but shows again that Trent Reznor has that very unique vocal rage charm. The guitar riffs are really simple and noise, and that makes it shine, like in the 2nd verse of 1,000,000, a brilliant and exciting moment.
There is much more speed and powerful Drums on this album, comparing with YearZero and with teeth this album is less electronic and more simple and more aggressive, and it really shows what NIN was and still is all about. Good and creative not labeled music.

Jul 23, 2008 22:00:54

Review 2 of 9

5of 5 Stars

I have to agree with gatheringforces, this album is almost primarily about relapse and addiction. As a recovering alcoholic, I get chills down my spine listening to some of these songs. 'Echoplex' in particular is quite haunting and by far my favorite track on the album, with 'Demon Seed' a close second lyrically.

If you are unfamiliar with addiction, it really helps to imagine some kind of beast deep within yourself screaming for what it wants. In my experience, this 'demon seed' of sorts can be screaming in rage in one minute, and talking seductively in my own voice the next. Through the process of recovery this voice gradually fades away -- read the lyrics to 'Echoplex' from the perspective of this voice and it makes a lot more sense.

Overall I love this album for it's incredibly personal nature. I haven't felt this much emotional connection to an album in a long time and the fact that it's a gift to fans makes it that much better.

Jun 16, 2008 21:19:25

Review 3 of 9

4of 5 Stars

Sometimes a name is fitting. The 49Percenter wrote a review below with 49% of truth. Even 49% of heart. Looks like he or she "lost their filter".

Reading the RS review, I see that all the facts are on the table including the decision-making process Reznor has assimilated since his departure from Interscope. "The Slip" as a freebie was a decent idea. An idea that giving away an album will yield revenues from future projects as well as the new strategy of releasing music an audiophile will have to purchase in its rightful format. See:Radiohead. Unless you are obsessed with progressiveness in all of your music you will appreciate the new Nine Inch Nails. It's true that this album has a familiar Nine Inch Nails sound. The driving guitars, the explosive drum patterns. The downtempo ambient electronic noise is here too. It's not vintage. What a ridiculous statement that is. Not quite sure what the expiration date on the vintage stamp is, but I'd venture to guess anything vintage Nine Inch Nails preceded "The Fragile."
"Head Down" is probably the greatest track Reznor has ever written and produced. The chorus rolls right into the next verse, a chopped-up barrage of insane breakbeats, buzzing and fuzzing until the third time where the vocals are absent and the climax of the track begins. "Discipline" may be the pop single of the album with its refrain, "Give me help/Give me discipline" And asking for help is something relatively new for Reznor. One can only assume this song has much to do with his recovery from drug addiction. All in all, I really dig this album. Which leads me to think that while Nine Inch Nails will have a hard time replicating the success had in the 1990s, Trent Reznor may turn out to be one prolific songwriter.

Jun 5, 2008 13:00:44

Review 4 of 9

3of 5 Stars

May 26, 2008 21:41:57

Review 5 of 9

2of 5 Stars

After reading the reviews in this article and below, maybe I need to re-listen to the album. When I read on the page that "this one is on him" I laughed. For years of support he gives the fans a trash album but makes them pay for 4 discs of mind numbing, albeit interesting, elevator music. I felt the album was shallow when it came to musical substance. The lyrical substance is up in the air for me. If he means it then good for him, but if he is just using these words as bait then shame on him. I can't be too ass-ertive, because I am wondering if I have been too harsh. I will give it another try and see if I have missed something...but I doubt it.

May 23, 2008 10:48:54

Review 6 of 9

5of 5 Stars

The one thing I believe RS failed to see about this album was its concept. The title alone is suggestive- in two ways. One the album was slipped to us free of charge, the other I believe refers to relapse. I feel that relapse is the overall theme of this album- and as a recovering addict- the metaphors are pretty plain to see. While as RS believes NIN is parading around on familiar turf of self loathing- I can see this as Reznor reflecting on where drugs have taken his mind in the past. The songs are a step outside of NIN's box because there always seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, and The Slip provides some of NIN's (dare I say) most inspirational material.

May 14, 2008 09:50:56

Review 7 of 9

5of 5 Stars

Whoa. Either T. Rizzle has a lot of time on his hands or he's kidnapped Adrien Belew, Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder, Stepehn Morris, and a buttload of other kidnapped and he's making them write tunes for him. Musically this his out of this world. He's making noise he hasn't since the days of the Spiral. That alone makes it his best since the Spiral. I really mean it. It's unbelievable. Here's a track by track rating.

999,999-9/10
1,000,000-7/10
Letting You 9/10
Discipline-9/10
Echoplex-2/10 (Only bad track on the album, but boy it sucks)
Head On-8/10
Lights in the Sky-6/10
Corona Raidata-9/10
The Four of Us Are Dying-9/10
Demon Seed-9/10

May 11, 2008 17:05:21

Review 8 of 9

5of 5 Stars

In regards to the post by the49percenter:

"It seems that Reznor has lost his filter and no longer feels bound to think too hard about a release before a record company decides to approve its marketing and shipping date."

How can you presume to know exactly how and what Trent Reznor was feeling about these songs when he wrote/recorded them? That is ludicrous. Take it for what it is. If every artist out there released the same exact brand of music over the course of a twenty year career then we'd all be in a world of hurt. I like the entire NIN catalogue and I take each album for what it is. How do you know that some of the songs on "The Slip" weren't written during the time of "The Downward Spiral" or "With Teeth" and just haven't found release until now?

Forgive me if I'm making too many assumptions about your post and the point you were trying to make. I guess I was just a bit confused about what your bottom line was.

Me? I love the album and I'm glad we live in an age where artists can take more creative control over their music. I'm glad we are rapidly moving out of the record-industry-controlled age to an age where we don't have to wait the standard "2 to 3" years between releases. So Trent, please, keep them coming!

May 8, 2008 13:55:24

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