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Some people seem to nurse their teenage angst well into
adulthood, and as long as there’s a paycheck in it, Trent Reznor will be among
them, spilling out his soul on tortured rants like “The Line Begins to Blur”
and “Every Day is Exactly the Same,” two highlights from his latest lament, With
Teeth. Sixteen years after Pretty
Hate Machine landed industrial in the MTV
mix, his bitterness has become a cottage industry, but these Nails show few
signs of rust. Reznor is still a master craftsman when he’s mining pop gold
from his brazen mix of screaming guitar licks, distorted vocals and rapid-fire
drum tracks, but he’s at his best when he keeps it simple: “Right Where It
Belongs,” an intimate, stripped-down ballad driven by little more than a
melancholy piano loop, closes Teeth
with the same disquieting flourish that “Hurt” lent to 1994’s Downward
Spiral. By now, Reznor may have whittled
his Nails down to a formula, but guess what? The formula works.
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