(Ed's note: I'm a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, so my biases will be rather amplified in all Nails related posts. Thank you for understanding.)
Nine Inch Nails return with Bad Witch, the third in a trilogy of releases that began with 2016’s Not the Actual Events and continued in 2017 with Add Violence. A terse, dizzying, jarring and frenetic work, Bad Witch is partly inspired by Trump-era politics and social climates (band leader Trent Reznor has been openly vocal about his disgust toward The Don as he was with George W. Bush.) Clocking in at just 30 minutes, the six songs that make up the album (originally an EP but for practical marketing and artistic reasons is an LP) show signs of impending cultural collapse that began with 2007’s heavily electronic Year Zero, which was very much a commentary on Bush’s policies taking the country into a dystopian state if things continued as they did. In keeping with angsty political charge, Bad Witch mixes discordant aggro-punk, swirling jazz rhythms and disorienting dissonance and finds Reznor seemingly waking up at 26 again with to-the-wall aggression that rings loudly of his earlier work. The addition of long time studio collaborator Atticus Ross, formerly of electronic band 12 Rounds, as Nails’s official second member (from 1989 to 2015, Nine Inch Nails was solely Trent Reznor) is without a question a great move. All studio releases since 2016 have had a more experimental direction. Additionally, the Reznor/Ross duo has released award winning film scores and the Nails format they present together feels right at home. Not the Actual Events explored dissociation and Add Violence brimmed with paranoia about increasingly simulated realities. Bad Witch completes what was previously started and unfinished in those EPs and makes for an uncompromising finale. Like 1992’s Broken, Nails made Bad Witch to be a grand opus of bleakness and turmoil and it has the sound of a world gone completely dark. Openers “Shitmirror” and “Ahead of Ourselves” set the tone and energy to give someone a proper punch in the face. “Play the Goddamned Part”, “God Break Down the Door” and “Over and Out” sound like Blackstar-era David Bowie on an acid industrial jazz kick with Reznor employing quasi-Bowie vocal ranges. Touches of saxophone throughout these tracks further compliment the already deliciously discordant soundscapes. “I’m Not from This World” is the soundtrack for a barren, cold and grey apocalyptic land, which scarily may not be that far off given the current state of the world.
Nine Inch Nails return with Bad Witch, the third in a trilogy of releases that began with 2016’s Not the Actual Events and continued in 2017 with Add Violence. A terse, dizzying, jarring and frenetic work, Bad Witch is partly inspired by Trump-era politics and social climates (band leader Trent Reznor has been openly vocal about his disgust toward The Don as he was with George W. Bush.) Clocking in at just 30 minutes, the six songs that make up the album (originally an EP but for practical marketing and artistic reasons is an LP) show signs of impending cultural collapse that began with 2007’s heavily electronic Year Zero, which was very much a commentary on Bush’s policies taking the country into a dystopian state if things continued as they did. In keeping with angsty political charge, Bad Witch mixes discordant aggro-punk, swirling jazz rhythms and disorienting dissonance and finds Reznor seemingly waking up at 26 again with to-the-wall aggression that rings loudly of his earlier work. The addition of long time studio collaborator Atticus Ross, formerly of electronic band 12 Rounds, as Nails’s official second member (from 1989 to 2015, Nine Inch Nails was solely Trent Reznor) is without a question a great move. All studio releases since 2016 have had a more experimental direction. Additionally, the Reznor/Ross duo has released award winning film scores and the Nails format they present together feels right at home. Not the Actual Events explored dissociation and Add Violence brimmed with paranoia about increasingly simulated realities. Bad Witch completes what was previously started and unfinished in those EPs and makes for an uncompromising finale. Like 1992’s Broken, Nails made Bad Witch to be a grand opus of bleakness and turmoil and it has the sound of a world gone completely dark. Openers “Shitmirror” and “Ahead of Ourselves” set the tone and energy to give someone a proper punch in the face. “Play the Goddamned Part”, “God Break Down the Door” and “Over and Out” sound like Blackstar-era David Bowie on an acid industrial jazz kick with Reznor employing quasi-Bowie vocal ranges. Touches of saxophone throughout these tracks further compliment the already deliciously discordant soundscapes. “I’m Not from This World” is the soundtrack for a barren, cold and grey apocalyptic land, which scarily may not be that far off given the current state of the world.
To summarize, Bad Witch is the album that Nine Inch
Nails has been holding off on writing until the time was right. It is a compelling
and refreshing release that doesn’t find the band stalling out and becoming
stale. Reznor and Ross warmly embrace ever-evolving technology both in the
studio and in unorthodox physical components (Not the Actual Events was nothing more than a black envelope filled
with black powder and transparent lyric cards and Add Violence was a manual for anxiety control.) In a society where
attention spans are shorter, this trilogy is perhaps an easy introduction to
newcomers while keeping long time fans excited for a new era of the band that
is likely to continue in other rousing presentations.
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