Review: With Teeth

[WITH_TEETH]

Nine Inch Nails

2005

I recall listening to With Teeth for the first time, somewhere near the end of high school and definitely during my first year of college. Well, definitely a couple of songs over and over. You know the ones. I remember being left in awe at the album both as a whole and in pieces and this is where my review starts.

With Teeth has always stood out as one of the best NIN albums for me. Where The Fragile seemingly faltered, With Teeth did the opposite and lunged forward and stood tall. The funny thing is that With Teeth is actually kind of far from "standard NIN". This time around, it's not just Trent playing every instrument himself with a heavier industrial synthesizered* lean like before. This time around the instruments extend beyond the norm in a more obvious way. You know, you can actually tell with greater ease that there are guitars and basses (redundant) at work. You also have to give it up for guests who do a damn great job (Dave Grohl, for instance on drums on tracks like Only and Getting Smaller).

Trent delivers on all levels, as if he learned from the misstep that is The Fragile. The level of aggression on With Teeth is awesome, to say the least (and also to use the most commonly used phrase of adoration). It is only enhanced by the fact that it at least seems less synthesizered* and therefore comes off as more human, more primal, more visceral. The same vicious NIN we've come to love over the years brought one step closer to you, the listener. The angry, seething, appreciative listener who more often than not, seeks someone to understand them. As do songs like Only, Getting Smaller, Sunspots, Every Day is Exactly the Same, and The Hand that Feeds. 

All of articulate what you have a hard time expressing sometimes: your anger, frustration, horniness, conflicts with your own self, an intense dissatisfaction with being blinded in a cyclical routine with almost no end. A chorus of increasing anger "... there is no you / there is only me / there is no fucking you / there is only me" serves as a perfect example of how With Teeth is that album that speaks volumes about what's trapped inside you, just dying to break free, to scratch, claw, fight, and bite its way out.

* That term is only there so we could be on the same page.

10/10