Happy 15th Anniversary to Nine Inch Nails’ fourth studio album With Teeth, originally released May 3, 2005.
There’s something to be said for a band that continues to surprise you without selling out or drastically reinventing themselves with every release. With Nine Inch Nails, their mastery of heavy synth annihilation against crunchy beats was evident on their dramatic debut release Pretty Hate Machine (1989), refined on the landmark outing The Downward Spiral (1994), and continued to evolve with the arrival of With Teeth in 2005.
The six years between their last release, 1999’s oft misunderstood and underappreciated The Fragile, and the final arrival of new music had been a turbulent period for chief NINer, Trent Reznor. A period of fame, drug addiction, more fame, more drugs chased by alcoholism, crippling depression and self-loathing/doubt culminated in a stint in rehab that offered clarity and a renewed sense of creativity that had previously eluded the newly inspired Reznor.
This clarity manifested itself in tight, sharp edged tracks that were laser focused in their delivery. As if impatient to deliver the music, the album opens with “All The Love In The World” that is given a single bar intro before Reznor’s voice enters. Against glitching beats and a bubbling bass line, the song builds from a brooding lament to an intense, if not rapturous, extended coda as the lyrics deal with the love/hate relationship of addiction. There’s a rawness and airiness present in the sparse mix that allows for the tension to build and finally climax in the rousing final minute.
From there, the album wastes no time in assaulting and delighting the senses with a mix of in-your-face delivery in the shape of the blistering “You Know What You Are?” and the face-melting “The Line Begins To Blur” to the alluringly melodic entrapment of “Only” and “Beside You In Time” through to the hard rocking “The Collector” and “Getting Smaller.”
With Reznor clearly still guiding the ship through rocky terrain, the sound is beefed up through the aid of longtime collaborator Alan Moulder and increased involvement by soon-to-be member Atticus Ross. A move away from layered drum machines to more acoustic drums is amped up by the addition of Dave Grohl on many of the album’s punchier tracks.
Many of the songs are direct reflections of Reznor’s battle with addiction and the relief of recovery. Others are haunted by the impact of a post 9/11 world, like the politically pointed “Hand That Feeds” that is steeped in fear of a brainwashed nation failing to see beyond the force-fed reality dished out by the powers that be. It pulls no punches in its lyrical delivery or production that shunts and pushes forward with every passing bar.
Reznor is at his most honest about his struggles and the crippling pangs of self-doubt in “Every Day Is Exactly The Same.” Acknowledging the creative blocks he was weighed down by, he broods, “I think I used to have a voice / Now I never make a sound,” and calls out the numbing effect of his addiction as he sings in the chorus, “There is no love here and there is no pain / Every day is exactly the same.”
But there is salvation present in the flow of the album as the final track, “Right Where It Belongs,” transitions for a murky mix of sawing bass synths, and piano with Reznor’s vocals almost buried beneath the surface that end up breaking through the surface of the second chorus, as if coming up for air and finding comfort in his new reality, set against a cheering audience that beckons him out.
Reznor sings, “What if you could look through the cracks? / Would you find yourself? / Find yourself afraid to see?” and it is these lines that succinctly encapsulate the 50 minutes of discovery and stripping bare of one’s soul that had come before it. They ask a question not only of Reznor himself, but us as listeners as well. Do we want to know the struggles, the turmoil and anguish that grips our musical idols, or do we just want to hear their songs without knowing the price paid to get there? Is it a tradeoff we are happy to make? And what does that say of us?
“With Teeth” bared, Reznor delivered another sonically captivating journey, and revitalized his desire and ability to create again. The resulting years delivered prolific outputs on a regular basis. Gone were the five-year lulls between releases. From here, the clarity and catharsis With Teeth brought him, freed him to create more regularly with releases rolling out every 18 months or so.
It may not be the album that first comes to mind within the Nine Inch Nails catalogue, but it is an album worth rediscovery for the turning point it signaled and the trajectory it placed future musical output on.
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