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Nine Inch Nails

With Teeth

By Edna Gundersen for USA Today on May 3, 2005

(3/4)

Trent Reznor, the industrial rock pioneer who once inspired steady enlistment in a swelling underground movement, now operates as a one-man subgenre. His mentors and disciples have faded, yet Reznor soldiers on, formulating fresh, computer-assisted compositions to ferrry his self-lacerating lyrics about psychic agony and rage. With Teeth bears little of the spooky delicacy of 1999's The Fragile, instead returning to the noisier tradition of 1994's The Downward Spiral. This time, Reznor aims for radio with a straight-ahead rock cruncher, The Hand That Feeds and scattered tunes with compact, accessible structures. Guest drummer Dave Grohl brings a ballistic punch to the party and Reznor's usual shriek eases into a surprising croon for All the Love in the World. Undiluted aggression and heavy textures move in for the latter half, resulting in such brazen, rhythmic steamrollers as Getting Smaller and the despairing piano ballad Right Where It Belongs.

Transcribed by Steven Flores aka thevoid99

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