Nine Inch Nails "Hesitation Marks"

With an album title questioning suicide, I thought Mr. Reznor was going back to being the angry little fucker of twenty years ago.  He's still lyrically skeptical here but musically this album is damn near danceable!  Hell, one track sounded like a cross of Underworld and Yello!  That ought to really disappoint the stubborn, narrow-minded fans (who haven't grown up yet) of the early NIN days.  Me?  Yeah, I was one of the earliest fans, too, having been all over Pretty Hate Machine from its 4th Q, 1989 release.  When the initial Lollapalooza tour announced a stop for Orlando in August, 1991, I knew where my butt would be planted.  Got there early and squatted a spot some thirty feet back and slightly left of center stage.  Henry Rollins killed it, the Butthole Surfers lit it up (yes to what you are thinking), Ice-T & Body Count hit the rap/metal button, then Fishbone put the party back on ground zero.  Next up was NIN, who had announced that the Orlando stop would be their last on the tour, and Trent and the boys proceeded to absolutely mangle the stage, literally.  I nearly blew a fuse when they covered Queen's "Get Down, Make Love," and by the time they got to the closer of "Head Like A Hole," several of the previous acts joined in and they destroyed every piece of musical equipment within twenty feet of the stage.  Awesome! 

I bought this new record the week it was released, but it stayed in the pile until the week before Halloween, which was the night of their local tour stop.  I halfheartedly imagined that if the album was a monster I'd go to the show, even though there wasn't the remotest possibility of it topping '91. 

Didn't go to the concert.  Not keeping the album as a whole.

Definitely keeping the opening salvo...and apparently the live show's initial blast, too...



There is plenty to like after this...beeps, boops, loops, Skinny Puppy-ish programming, but it took twenty-five more minutes before I found two more tracks worth retaining.  No wonder Adrian Belew bowed out of touring.  I knew he was on the record but I'll be damned if I would have realized it had I not known.  Same goes for a Lindsey Buckingham guitar contribution.  Really?  Where?

I purchased the deluxe edition (it was the same price as the single disc...duh!) and the three reworked tracks were not among my keepers, however, two of the three remixes were superior to their originals.  Each spin through the disc I kept noting the second remix was outstanding, so I finally picked up the info sheet and...well, I'll be damned..."All Time Low (Todd Rundgren Remix)."  Touched by the genius of The Runt. 

If you're keeping score, that's 28 worthy minutes out of seventy-nine, which is twenty-eight more than the project Reznor did with his wife, How To Destroy Angels.  Talk about the "Yoko Factor"...yeesh...but I digress.  "Hesitation Marks" debuted in the Top 10 in at least a dozen markets (I found two #1's), but it's average chart run was less than a month everywhere except in the U. S., and it dropped off here at the end of October. 

I'll let you tie the ends...