Wave goodbye to what you were - the rules have changed

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

08/05/05 : WITH_TEETH - Nine Inch Nails

NIN are a bit noisy for my liking, but there's no denying the skill they put into their music and every so often they surprise me with a track I like, so I'm not dreading this (whilst still not exactly looking forward to it).

Yeah, it's all verging on a bit too noise-like for me, particularly in the vocal arena, but it's not hateful.  I appreciate he wants to sing on his own music, but a few guest vocalists a la Chemical Brothers wouldn't have hurt for me here.  Having said that, I really liked "Right Where It Belongs" the final track of the original album - it's a softer more melodic track and it hangs together nicely.  I don't think there's really anything massively original here (Depeche Mode and LCD Soundsystem definitely popped into my head at several points throughout the album) but it was all mostly bearable.

We're at #3 with a new entry on the start of a five week run which featured a series of steep drops, but it's still one of their most successful albums over here.  The rest of the top five this week were Akon, Basement Jaxx, Robert Plant/Strange Sensation (another new entry that I'm scared to investigate) and Bruce Springsteen and the next highest new entry is a Cream best-of (#6).

Wikipedia has more than I expected on the album (181 milliPeppers) and it tells me this is their fourth album and it's mostly Trent Reznor but it also features, amongst others, Atticus Ross (who would later join the band) and Dave Grohl.  Amusingly, the album was initially going to be titled Bleedthrough but as Trent explained "It was supposed to be about different layers of reality seeping into the next, but I think some people were thinking about blood or a tampon commercial".  In a nice touch, because Trent doesn't like CD artwork, they offered a downloadable 3x4 ft poster - good luck with getting that printed out!  The critics either liked it or REALLY didn't like it (which I suspect is true for many people when it comes to NIN) but it got to #1 in the US, so I guess they didn't massively care.

"Customers also listened to" Tool, How To Destroy Angels (great name!), Marilyn Manson and A Perfect Circle - all of whom are a bit noisy for my liking, but they definitely know what they're doing and sometimes I almost like it.  As is true for NIN and I'd say I mostly didn't mind this, but didn't really like Trent's vocals.

01/05/05 - Bruce doing whatever Bruce wants
15/05/05 - Better than expected, but still quite annoying

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