1. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: Themes of depression and anguish fill this record, but instead of settling for glum confessions, Reznor molds the mood with animated confrontation and spastic vitality. That's what I get. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: The music here focuses on personal decay and lets it play out in real time starting with the first decortication and ending with a visceral atrophy that is downright mesmerizing. Of course, it takes Reznor to prudently shift the blame from “them” to “us,” and he does so with his trademark, self-deprecating candor. If you thought 50-11 were bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Donald Sterling – … But the song’s bleak meditation on death becomes more arresting as you spend time with it, a testament to Reznor’s ability to squeeze incredible mileage from a limited sonic palette. Both releases evoke an atmosphere of cold tranquility that is unmistakably Reznor and Ross. Crown of shit: “She’s Gone Away” sounds like the sister track to “Reptile” off The Downward Spiral. Right where it belongs: “Shut up, silence/ Add a little violence/ And offend and pretend and defend and demand my compliance” from “Less Than”. Crown of shit: In a record essentially containing three instrumental tracks, it’d be hard to overlook Bad Witch’s more straight-forward offerings, but it feels like the abrasive discomfort of “Ahead of Ourselves” is exactly the type of deformed grandeur one could forget when discussing this record. The track’s final minute of danceable industrial rock comes as a surprise on the fourth track of an EP that doesn’t offer anything else like this groove before this moment — in classic Reznor fashion. In 2016, Nine Inch Nails were nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Shadow of a shadow: Hesitation Marks being a reflection on the past work of Nine Inch Nails pretty much connects it to Reznor’s soundtrack for the reflective documentary The Vietnam War, as both look back on decades-old material with somber deliberation and creative ennui. Right where it belongs: “Get the door, get the door.” Ghosts I-IV is entirely instrumental with a few vocal samples. Black Noise is one of the weaker tracks IMO. The perfect drug: With Broken, Reznor set out to create an angsty, almost intentionally ugly record. Though opener “Less Than” can be viewed as a companion piece to Hesitation Marks heavyweight “Copy of A”, “The Background World” is a conceptual successor, gorgeously elaborating on the proliferation of lifeless replication to the point of unrecognizable depravity. This is one of the classic gems, an album seemingly well ahead of … Nothing is glorified here though as Reznor embraces the ugly and beauty of every emotion, leaving you with a clear idea of what it means to be tortured. Arrogant, avoidant and oblivious to the consequences, the worst communicators of 2014 serve as reminders that we are all public speakers, whether to audiences of one or many, behind closed doors or beneath bright lights. From the works of Kevin Federline to Limp Bizkit to multiple albums by Chris Brown, these LPs drew the ire of critics and provoked the repulsion of many. Right where it belongs: “Not quite as clever as we think we are/ Knuckle dragging animal/ When we could have done anything/ We wound up building this” from “Ahead of Ourselves” is as smart a critique on the current climate as you’re going to find in today’s music. Across his career, fans have followed Reznor through fits of bleak depression, suicidal flirtations, ambient explorations, religious and political onslaughts, and anxious echoes. The Fragile is one of the few albums that managed to have it both ways, embracing the zeitgeist while welcoming in any number of surprising influences, from ‘70s prog rock to turn-of-the-century Impressionism. It just seems so out of place and odd. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: Armed with a brash, newly renovated sound, there is a feeling of reparation in the music here, but Reznor often retreats back to a misanthropic world view in a way that connects this trilogy of EPs (or whatever). Worst is different than favourite to me so im doing worst. If I had to pick the worst album of 2000, it would be Blender. Reznor fully exploits the meaning of an infectious hook here with an earworm that’s as catchy as it is epidemic and coerces you to embrace the duplicitous structure in all its turbulent glory. A dense and difficult listen requiring attention and repeated listenings, it is now considered by many hardcore fans to be their favorite NIN record. What the soundtrack to Before the Flood and this EP share is a clear focus on texture. Crown of shit: In a lyrical and musical sense, “Running” is a jarring and noxious offering that shows Reznor is still more than willing to accost his listeners with an uncomfortable song. As far as music goes, “the worst” is a slippery category: the worst album of all time was probably made by some godawful crunkcore/pop-punk band … Crown of shit (Most Underrated Song): Among the barest compositions in Reznor’s ouvre, the devotional piano ballad “Lights in the Sky” is easy to skip past in favor of The Slip’s more maximalist fare. Does Year Zero blatantly steal ideas from some of the most well-trodden dystopian novels and films out there? It’s a work so great that it almost bumps up the other two entries in the trilogy, offering up existential clarifications, musical addendums, and lyrical conclusions that make you wonder if it was all outlined before the first EP was even recorded. I thought it was supposed to be some kind of pun sentence. Just name the album then the worst song from each, you can leave some out if you can't decide! She's gone away. Right where it belongs: “Don’t try to tell me how some power can corrupt a person/ You haven’t had enough to know what it’s like from.” What was once a thinly veiled swipe at George W. Bush is now a fitting epigram for the Trump presidency. It’s a relatable feeling — looking back over your past with a new critical eye in a way that invites dejection into your world. The unrelenting struggle that fills all of his records is still here, but it’s a struggle that’s migrated from angsty depression and arrived in a land full of abstract rumination. Brokencyde I'm Not a Fan, but the Kids Like It! His freedom from major-label constraints is coupled with the anxiety of growing old and irrelevant, lending a hard edge to an album that’s often overlooked in Nine Inch Nails’ deep catalog. Twitter user @BadRedditPosts did us all the favor of finding them and putting them in one place. Though it allegedly rose from a dark period in Reznor’s life, the song is more interesting as a pastiche of classical Impressionism and avant-garde art rock, and it seems to achieve a kind of uneasy serenity after a chaotic middle section. When considered as a whole, though, it is probably Nine Inch Nails’ most forgettable release. Meaning which song i think is of the least quality. Ghosts I-IV has been called beautiful, boring, recklessly self-absorbed, and everything in between. They were not inducted. This album shows that Collective Soul has had some miserable lows throughout their career, and this is one of them. As the gold standard of ’90s industrial, the album has been worshiped and poorly imitated almost non-stop since its release. As the song reaches a climax, you’ll hear that vintage Nine Inch Nails sound that ultimately made Reznor a true musical icon. Year Zero channels such nightmares into a sprawling concept album that encompasses not only 16 tracks but also an alternate reality game that brings Trent Reznor’s vision of a post-Wasteland society to life. As a snapshot of that anxious era, The Fragile stands the test of time. Five years after releasing their sophomore album ‘Invoke the Bizarre’, Bangalore’s Bevar Sea used the Covid-19 imposed lockdown as an opportunity to regroup and start working on the third album titled ‘The Timeless Zone’. Tough question, but mine would probably be (leaving out the transitional style tracks), Hesitation Marks - Everything (probably least favorite NIN song), New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Press J to jump to the feed. Down in it (Analysis): Though perhaps more notable for its means of distribution than for its actual music, The Slip finds Reznor consolidating some of his strongest qualities as a songwriter on an album that encapsulates two decades’ worth of evolution. Quake had mostly a dark, ambient soundtrack with an industrial flair. Chris Connelly wrote for Rolling Stone: "Without exaggeration, [Philosophy of the World] may stand as the worst album ever recorded." This passage describes how painful and crippling that feeling can truly be. Shadow of a shadow: The logical connection is between Ghosts and Reznor’s soundtrack to The Social Network. The slowed-down song from Post Malone's 2018 album "Beerbongs & Bentleys" lacks the infectious hooks of some of the soloist's other hits. But if we’re looking for a complement elsewhere in Reznor’s catalog, the logical place to start is his soundtrack to the 2016 climate change documentary Before the Flood. Play them back to back and you’ll definitely feel they are sonically opposed, yet somehow spiritually coherent. Listening to Ghosts I-IV and The Social Network soundtrack back to back will require a large chunk of time and some serious patience. You could imagine this record being born from a late-night obsession, one that’s fueled by an anxious dissatisfaction that comes only from an artist shackled by boundless and restless talent. Agreed. As we age and our purposes shift, there is often a period of being unsure about what should come next. The perfect drug: “March of the Pigs” hits fast and hard. Shadow of a shadow: Broken sounds almost nothing like the work of soundtrack-era Reznor. The frantic percussion that opens the track sets the pace for a bass-heavy groove oozing with distortion. My violet heart. PJ Harvey has made one muddled, mediocre album, though, and it’s called A … PJ Harvey has never made a bad album. 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In turning away from the mainstream and toward more uncompromising soundscapes, Reznor began to shape a sustainable blueprint for the next phase of his career. This is by no means a bad release, and these tracks do have some exciting moments, but it was disappointing to finally have a Nine Inch Nails project that can deservedly be labeled safe. So, take a walk with me as we look at the absolute worst posts from the terrible website that is Reddit. We've finally arrived: The The best of the worst. Fish in a barrel. You know you can just double enter? We go through it all to find out the best and worst … To listen to this album is to engage in the sonic equivalent of a 12-round fist fight, and Reznor provides his listeners with only a few fleeting chances to come up for air. The verses’ loud-soft-holy shit dynamics helped usher in a new wave of ‘90s alt-metal, and the angsty, arena-ready lyrics proved that Nine Inch Nails were ready to play to the masses after blowing the doors off Lollapalooza a year prior. What resulted was his most straightforward rock record to date. The downbeat, somber mood is uniquely Reznor, and the album is effective in terms of creating a concept, even if that concept can feel adrift at times and with no conceivable conclusion. This release sounds nothing like any other Nine Inch Nails release and at times feels more like an unfinished experiment than a carefully crafted piece of minimalism or drone. I'm suprised by the hand that feeds being on the bottom. The difference here is that Reznor is able to amplify it to imperial heights in a way that almost obfuscates any disparaging revelations. “All the Love in the World” is a perfect example of everything Nine Inch Nails can do well. You have the saxophone work of “Driver Down”, which feels right at home in Bad Witch’s amalgam nest, as well as Bowie bookending the soundtrack, which seems fitting considering his broad influence on Bad Witch’s most imperative moments. Take a look and explore the darkest and most cerebral part of the human condition. One of the beautiful ones: “Dear World” is the most composed track on Not the Actual Events. Broken is the first extended play (EP) and second major release by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.It was released on September 22, 1992, by Nothing, TVT, and Interscope Records.The EP was produced by frontman Trent Reznor and Flood.. Now, I’m not talking about wannabe hip-hop celebrities like Kevin Federline or Macho Man Randy Savage (RIP BROTHA) who dropped one terrible album and bowed out. Physical. Abandoning any concept of dynamic range, Reznor and Atticus Ross combine for a remarkably dense collection of dark and brooding soundscapes that has found itself as the most divisive record among fans. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. The perfect drug (Most Danceable Groove): It’s no shock that “Discipline” emerged as the first single from this album. With that said, album closer “Suck” gets butts moving with a funky bass lick that bridges the gap between Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral. Some of the worst songs of the 2017 can be found on this album. One of the beautiful ones: The seven-minute devotional epic “We’re in This Together” embodies everything that makes The Fragile so great and so frustrating. :), Disclaimer: I actually love all these song, I just like gen least out of the rest (this goes especially for broken). Reznor’s guided tour begins in the lowest circles of the underworld, where gnashing guitars and tidal waves of percussion all but suck the air out of the sulfuric atmosphere. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: It doesn’t take a music savant to pick up on The Downward Spiral’s concept even on first listen. The perfect drug: In addition to being the album’s best song, “God Break Down the Door” has a remarkable dance groove to it. With Teeth is hardly a record to skip over. Down in it: Add Violence bounces back from the noisy indulgence of Not the Actual Events and returns Nine Inch Nails to the vanguard of protean sorrow. “I would find a way,” serves as a sharp closing remark and the only sliver of hope that the album ever offers. — and that mystery is veiled by the fantastic rhythmic layering and mélange of diverse sounds that distract you from finding your answer. This track could fit excellently as the soundtrack to a Cormac McCarthy film or even paired alongside some of the music of Earth that is inspired by similar themes. Crown of shit: Sultry and afflicted, “The Lovers” is a scopic piece of music, tethering an unsettling spoken poem to yearning, prolonged vocalizations with an anxious, yet coercive atmosphere. So much of Hesitation Marks feeds off of obscured emotion, making this line of direct frustration a welcome breath of fresh and angry air. It contains a few great tracks that still serve as essentials in the band’s live set. Within moments, we know we’re not in the same universe that bred the pop-adjacent industrial dance rock of Pretty Hate Machine. Originally featured in NME magazine, it’s the 50 most depressing (but brilliant) records of all time. It was strange to hear Reznor create something so predictable and boilerplate for the era when he had been pushing boundaries so successfully in the ’90s. Pinion and 999,999 are awesome in their own right still. Though not quite a triumph, it’s a twisted, tantalizing preview of the sexual energy that courses through The Downward Spiral. The album is very digestible by Nine Inch Nails standards (13 Tracks, 56 minutes), but suffers from a lack of consistency. The perfect drug: “Only” is the best radio friendly rock song Reznor has ever written. This track could even be a a Downward Spiral B-side, but it’s still a pretty good B-side. Nine Inch Nails have surprise-released a pair of sequels to the band’s 2008 instrumental series Ghosts: Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts. Please. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: After a tumultuous decade filled with alcoholism and drug use, With Teeth was Reznor’s attempt at chronicling his path toward sobriety. A quiet heartbeat of distorted synthesizers explodes into a chorus that screams “US VS. EVERYBODY” in both a literal and sonic sense. Revisit the scenes where she carries out her savage ruse, and you’ll hear perfect opportunities for “The Background World”, “This Isn’t the Place”, and even “Not Anymore” to enhance the film. Still Ghosts I-IV is riddled with concrete ideas and unique sounds. His success means that Broken is way less groovy than its immediate predecessor. The album carefully allows the listen to peer into its world at a distance with infectious bass lines and quaint piano melodies, only to viciously swallow the listener whole with feedback, noise, pummeling rhythm, and Reznor’s shouted croons. There are plenty of other great grooves found on Hesitation Marks, but they all fit the mold of a binary pace, inviting the listener to sway and pump rather than break out into a multi-dimensional rollick like the infectious rhythm of “Satellite” compels you to perform. Life’s funny like that, you know? The song opens up sounding like an unearthed Depeche Mode jam, one that corrupts the melody of “Just Can’t Get Enough” while amplifying the menace of “Personal Jesus”. Along with Not the Actual Events, he found time to contribute toward the soundtracks of two films. 'Kinda I Want To' does grate on me a little, probably the worst I have to say about NIN. Down in it: Bad Witch concludes Nine Inch Nails’ trilogy (2016’s Not the Actual Events and 2017’s Add Violence) in an intoxicating manner, strengthening the connection between the previous releases while also forging a new path that’s perhaps more provocative and exhilarating than anything Reznor has done in the last 10 years. We’ve combed over all of the albums Nine Inch Nails has to offer (including the long EPs), picking out the lost treasures, best grooves, dynamic moods, memorable lyrics, and even those moments that mirror Reznor’s acclaimed soundtrack work, until we were left with the best representation of what makes Nine Inch Nails so menacingly great. broken - the last two bonus songs are meh, TDS - piggy is a glorified drum demo that sours the momentum of mr. self destruct, with teeth - Sunspots sounds like a vacuum cleaner, year zero - beginning of the end sounds like an arena rock song, and similar to piggy, sours the momentum of the opening track. Ghosts I-IV depicts Reznor as an artist with seemingly infinite ideas and as someone with a knack for finding ways to tie those ideas to a single mood. You pretty Much have my list lol, almost to the T, Except on the frail; i would have chose La Mer! One of the beautiful ones: There is nothing resembling a single on this record or even a moment that is supposed to exist outside of the tracks as a whole. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: Reznor once again teams up with Atticus Ross for this short EP, which sounds like the classic ’90s Nine Inch Nails sound coated in a frozen layer of metallic sheen. By the time the guitars have blown out the speakers, not only is nothing left on the table, but the table itself is a smoldering heap of ashes. Shadow of a shadow: Although it predates With Teeth by nearly 10 years, the Quake soundtrack could serve as a nice pair in terms of highlighting how different Trent Reznor can be as an artist. Stick around for the latter half, which explodes outward in dazzling fashion and then cuts out abruptly, as if to deny the record any sense of clean resolution. Crown of shit: A Nine Inch Nail anomaly for more reasons than one, “La Mer” is a stunning piano composition that arrives late on the album’s left side. Down in it: That Pretty Hate Machine is a great record goes without saying, as it houses several spectacular songs and helps challenge industry standards, specifically what a “catchy melody” can and maybe should be. Right where it belongs: “And when I suck you off, not a drop will go to waste/ It’s really not so bad, you know once you get past the taste.” This description of fellatio from “Starfuckers, Inc.” takes the cake, offering a harrowing and hilarious visual image on an album whose lyrics too often bask in angsty abstraction. The last album on the list that I own is Beck's Midnite Vultures. It’s far less apocalyptic-sounding, which goes to show that there are different ways to depict dystopia. One of the beautiful ones: Trent Reznor has famously stated that “Hurt” is now Johnny Cash’s song, due to his cover that has probably reached far more listeners than Reznor’s original version. The perfect drug: With a clap-beat and cagey melody, “Satellite” is the song that best suits any type of musical gambol. It’s a work rooted in personal decay, but not shackled as it can easily affix itself to feelings of political laments (“Less Than”), anxious intimacy (“The Lovers”), or capitalist disobedience (“This Isn’t the Place”). Just name the album then the worst song from each, you can leave … 11 votes, 46 comments. The album’s sinister grooves and raw explosive power feel just as wildly unhinged as ever. uDiscover salutes the worst album covers of all time. If you’re looking for Reznor’s best lyrics, you won’t find any here! Metallica ’ s Reload is the first album I ever bought with my own money. Referencing the left-over marks of suicide in the album title only furthers the notion that Reznor has moved past his sorrow here, even if his past decay is still audibly evident. Can't decide. Nine Inch Nails wouldn’t win over the masses until The Downward Spiral, but Broken helped them infiltrate the subcultures of punk and metal and pick each apart from the insides. Not me, though. An interpretation of Claude Debussy’s orchestral work La Mer in the loosest sense imaginable, the track trades in Reznor’s howls and screams for a French Creole verse delivered in near-whispers by guest vocalist Denise Milfort. Year Zero sticks so closely to its messaging that the album sometimes threatens exhaustion, so breaks such as this (as well as the instrumental “Another Version of the Truth”) come as a welcome reprieve. Yeah, third-worst album of all time sounds about right for this one. Love is not enough. All of this is to say we’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, and we’re far from the paint-by-numbers alt-rock of predecessor With Teeth. Discordant and uncomfortable, album opener “The Eater of Worlds” could easily fit into the soundtrack’s minimal gloom, while “Other Ways to Get to the Same Place” from the soundtrack could easily serve as an elegiac intermission for the album. Worth noting, too, that this EP followed an especially prolific period in the band members’ career, letting you know that the 50-year-old Reznor is still as sharp as ever despite being pulled in multiple directions. It’s the only real distinguishable lyric on the record. Down in it: By design, Reznor is at his least ambitious here, but by settling down, he’s able to execute grandiose moments that easily complement his greatest works. But step back into that mid-2000s milieu, and you’ll find an anxious world beset with nightmares of nuclear war, global warming, and spiritual bankruptcy — in other words, a world not so different from today’s. The perfect drug: Reznor works hard on this record to push synth-pop in a new direction that gives him freedom to contort and exploit the genre’s appeal and potential. Paddy Roberts was a British songwriter and singer who released several albums during the 1950s and 1960s. That formula is packaged with enough modern flair to make a new full-length from the band enticing in a greater way than just nostalgia. Like many of the best tracks the band has released, “Dear World” is equal parts beautiful and elegantly disorderly. Excess is the name of the game, and it doesn’t take long to get there. Whether it’s a maddeningly lazy delivery, awful lyrics or embarrassing content, I’ve found the 10 worst offenders in rap. Down in it: The Downward Spiral endures as Nine Inch Nails’ crowning achievement. Docked ten or so spots for the spoken-word bridge and cheerleader breakdown, which might be the worst 24 seconds of the entire album. Some may even be higher up on my favourites list. https://www.looper.com/184549/the-worst-movie-remakes-of-all-time Stale incense, old sweat, and lies: Given the political events that have transpired since, the apocalyptic doomsaying of Bush-era protest music can be difficult to take seriously. The mood here may be dour, but it’s anything but stale. A grinding bass line is the backbone of the groove, but it’s the filthy guitar riff that lands this one somewhere between a sawmill and a strip club. Its groove echoes and seems to have a way of worming its way back into memory. While the sounds of Clock DVA and SPK were probably a bit too much to stomach, it opened up a world of possibility for the genre, showing that its inhuman approach could scrupulously tackle the human condition. Shadow of a shadow: As Nine Inch Nails’ most experimental album, The Fragile makes for an interesting pairing with Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which similarly melds diverse instrumentation to convey fear, anxiety, and the notion of the self gradually slipping away. One of the beautiful ones: It’s not Nine Inch Nails’ most ambitious song, nor its best reinvention, but “God Break Down the Door” is exactly the sharp left turn you desire from Reznor at this stage of his career. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not your friend. What resulted was his most straightforward rock record to date. This is a rare album that uniquely captures the period it was born out of while subsequently being a record that will likely never stop feeling relatable to young adults that feel a bit out of place and are in need of an outlet for aimless aggression. If we don't know what unfunny is, we won't know what funny is when it hits us. Dancey, contemplative, catchy, apprehensive, and augmentative, Reznor utilizes every sharpened musical knife he owns to slice deep and rid you of your toxins in a purifying aural detox. Similarly, the digital and analog meld in unexpected ways here, creating a sense of being on the threshold of something unnamable at the dawn of the 21st century. Shadow of a shadow: It’s hard to imagine something as sonically bombastic as Pretty Hate Machine matching up with a diffusive soundtrack, but the instrumental story of Gone Girl definitely makes a strong case. “Kinda I Want To” is a perfect example of this, providing a musical blueprint that could have been a hit for Tiffany and Paula Abdul under a (vastly) different producer as it pulsates with the energy that has come to define the radio sound of the ’80s. What the track sacrifices in the band’s classic distortion is more than made up for by its brilliant writing and vicious chorus. The two years that followed, the Hall Of Fame didn't even nominate NIN … Infusing glitch and noise sounds with pliant synth-pop structures, Reznor eagerly exposed industrial music to countless listeners. The track is evidence enough that Reznor hardly needs power electronics and effects pedals to make an aggressive and poignant track. The track features a winding mandolin-like sound alongside strong percussion that emits feelings of traveling in the American Southwest. Most importantly, along with Doolittle by Pixies, this record helped set the pace and tone of the alt-rock explosion of the ’90s, where the feeling of opaque melancholy that Reznor mastered here would take the mainstream hostage for a brief yet glorious moment. Most striking is the contrast between the humane bass line and inorganic drum machine, giving the song a sense of conflict Reznor is more than eager to expound on vocally. Right where it belongs: “Gotta listen to your big-time, hard-line, bad luck, fist-fuck!” Ask Trent Reznor about the proudest accomplishment of his musical career, and he’s likely to cite the time he won a Grammy for a song that says “fist-fuck.” This sneering line in “Wish” may not be his most poetic, but it remains a fan favorite and embodies the punk spirit that distinguishes Broken from the rest of Nine Inch Nails’ catalog. The album received wider release in 1980 where it gained attention (much of it ironically positive) for being so bad, it's good. Throughout those three decades, he’s pushed boundaries and tested limits wherever he could, whether it was by mutating synth-pop into his own signature industrial sound or by simply trying to discover the limits of broadcast television. Down in it: Nine Inch Nails were going for a new sound, but not in a radical way like with Ghosts.