After pumping out a slew of sinister, aggressive rockers like “Head Like a Hole,” “March of the Pigs” and “Closer,” you might expect the new Nine Inch Nails CD to be packed with more of the same gothic adrenaline. Well, there’s good news. The good news is that the band’s new CD, And All That Could Have Been, is loaded with 16 of the band’s killer cuts performed live and loud. The other bit of good news is that the album is also available with Still, a companion CD that comes as part of an optional two-disc package.
Lead singer and principle songwriter of Still,Trent Reznor, takes an approach more characteristic of Moby and Tori Amos.
And All That Could Have Been was recorded from the band’s Fragility tour, a tour that Rolling Stone called the best of 2000.
Live albums are often scoffed at for lacking the synthetic clarity of their studio counterparts and are often dismissed as being mere cash cows to pick up a quick buck from their loyal fans before it’s time to go back to the studio; however, as the saying goes, there is an exception to every rule, and if there is one thing that NIN is good at, it’s breaking the rules.
The openness of the arenas allow the sound to carry out, making it more forceful, like an expanding mushroom cloud generated by an audio nuke.
On “March Of The Pigs,” “Terrible Lie” and “Head Like A Whole,” Reznor attacks the airwaves with his aggressive vocals, and the listener can feel (not just hear) the energy reverberated by the crowd.
Even slow-tempo, piano-driven tracks like “The Frail” and “Hurt” leave the listener with a surge of energy as Reznor’s dark, haunting lyrics enliven a sense of frustrated mortality.
Best of all, the album does something I would not have thought possible, it makes “Closer,” arguably the band’s greatest hit, sounding nearly as good live as it does on The Downward Spiral.
By capturing the energy of live shows and bringing it to the listener without candy coating it, NIN has made All That Could Have Been perhaps the greatest live album since Peter Frampton’s 1976 classic, Frampton Comes Alive.
I could go on and on about how great these songs sound live, but then I’d never get to the new NIN classics in the making.
Still contains four NIN favorites (“Something I Can Never Have,” “The Fragile,” “The Becoming”and “The Day The World Went Away”) recorded live in a deconstructed fashion, void of screaming fans and reverb from the speakers. It also contains one new vocal track and four new instrumentals.
The first new track is “Adrift and at Peace,” a stirring piano waltz that is so simple, it is brilliant.
On “Gone, Still,” a constant, thumping acoustic guitar chord throbs like the pulse of a dying man, reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Goodbye Cruel World.”
“And All That Could Have Been” is the album’s one new vocal track from Reznor. It serves as the band’s most characteristic track on the album as Reznor’s haunting vocals surge upon a slew of multiple keyboard riffs as the tempo slowly builds to a crawl much like that of “Hurt.”
The best new track is “The Persistence of Loss.” This time, Reznor’s strikingly simplistic piano work is accompanied by a small orchestra and even some chirping birds. Puzzling perhaps, but purely tranquil nonetheless.
The album comes to a close with “Leaving Hope,” a stirring ensemble with blazing, reverberating guitar chords that seem to hang in midair as the piano scheme sets adrift like Moby’s “Porcelain.”
Since 1989, Nine Inch Nails has been one of rock’s most inventive bands. They have an uncanny ability to make the grotesque beautiful. They can take something as mechanically noisy as a cement truck and make it sound unconventionally mellifluous.
Even when stripped to the bare essentials, the band finds a way to disturb, perhaps even more hauntingly than ever before, thus securing Reznor’s place as the Anne Rice of rock.
Still is an aptly titled album. If it were any stiller, it would be frozen in time, but, ultimately, that is what we all want, to be caught in a trance of magical serenity, oblivious to the rigors of everyday life, even if it is just for 45 minutes.