Album Review: Nine Inch Nails – The Slip

After the instrumental diversion of Ghosts I-IV it was back to business as usual on 2008’s The Slip.  After a brief instrumental (999,999), a stomping beat lifted from Pearl Jam’s Last Exit ushers in a standard issue Trent Reznor angsty belter in the shape of 1,000,000. 

After a pair of tracks in a similar vein (Letting You and Discipline), the album gets a lot more interesting on fifth track Echoplex.  A mechanized beat opens the track, on which the music is urgent and insistent, like a darker version of Depeche Mode.

It’s the less typically NIN tracks which succeed here, sparse piano ballad Light In The Sky is possibly the quietest ever NIN track, Reznor’s vocals seldom raising above a whisper.  Corona Radiata is a leisurely seven minute instrumental in the vein of the aforementioned Ghosts, before the pace picks up again with the pacy The Four Of Us Are Dying.

Although it’s a relatively short album (for Nine Inch Nails) at just under 45 minutes, it’s possibly a more enjoyable one than some of their longer efforts.