review of Nine Inch Nails' "The Slip"

I am going to skip over the huge but musically unrelated facts that a. this is the second major release from Trent Reznor in about as many months (yes, months, not years) (the first being the 36-track instrumental experiment 'Ghosts I-IV') and b. Reznor released this album solely on his web site, www.nin.com, for anyone and everyone to download completely free and just focus on the new album, 'The Slip'.

 

As a stand alone Nine Inch Nails album, 'The Slip' is solid, but as a sequel/aspect/coda to 2007's 'Year Zero', it's excellent.

The world of 'The Slip' could indeed be that which Reznor created for us a little over a year ago.

Many of the songs match in tone as well as subject matter and, at times, musicality.

"Letting You" is about fury at those who hold you down and pull your strings, but it is also about fury at yourself for letting these people do these things to you.

In "1,000,000", an excellent NIN album opener (and, hopefully, soon-to-be live staple), we see an individual so dulled, so numbed by his routines that the only way he can tell he's alive is to kill himself again and again.

 

There is also a distinct sci-fi feel to this album with such tracks as "Lights In The Sky" which may be a direct reference to The Presence (the huge, four-fingered hand whose appearance the sky seemed to indicate imminent destruction that was introduced on 'Year Zero'), "Corona Radiata", a 'Ghosts I-IV'-esque soundscape that is beautiful in its subtlety (except for Reznor's choice to include the stock sound effect of a cat yowling towards the end which COMPLETELY takes the listener out of it), "Demon Seed", a layered piece with some excellent drum programming lifted from "38 Ghosts" (a leftover from the 'Ghosts I-IV' sessions) that tells about a seed that is growing and changing the narrator and the album's intro track "999,999" with it's building, alien synth-pulse.

While including elements of 'Year Zero' makes 'The Slip' a bit esoteric, the straight up Nine Inch Nails radio track "Discipline" (part "The Hand That Feeds", part "Only") makes at least some of it accessible to the casual listener.

 

An interesting theory some people are batting around is that, based on the similar sound most of the tracks share, and their subject matter plus the first line spoken on this album (which might be "how did I slip into this?"), 'The Slip' is actually an album CREATED by the Nine Inch Nails OF 'Year Zero', the year 2022 in which the government, environment and society in general are in an apocalyptic state of emergency.

 

Whatever the case, like 'Year Zero', 'The Slip' is an album made richer by the context in which it's set.

Without that context though, the album isn't a complete success.

So you've got a choice:

Either head over to the homepage of 42 Entertainment, the company responsible for the four month ARG (alternate reality game) that set the stage for and accompanied the release of 'Year Zero', and spend an hour or so digging through the massive amount of story surrounding it or just turn up the volume on the four or five loud tracks and headbang like you're 16 again.

Either way, you'll have fun.