Phonebook Eater
Trent Reznor with his third studio album creates what many consider his masterpiece, "The Fragile", a double album with many new brilliant ideas. Compared to "The Downward Spiral",NIN's real masterpiece, it has a lot more experimentation and with many more progressive elements. That's why many prog fans appreciate this. For me, it is an excellent industrial rock album, with some great songs, alternated with some weird and dark soundscapes.
The lyrics are much more personal than usual, narrating the despair that Reznor had at the time. He in fact was seriously meditating about killing himself the same period that he wrote the album.
Musically, there are some excellent songs, like "Starf***ers Inc.", "Where In This Together", "Into The Void", and the title track. All of these songs are incredibly dark, and they probably can be interpreted as a sort of continuation to "The Downward Spiral"'s uncomfortable bleakness. Some songs though aren't really as fascinating as others, so the album maybe is a little bit too long, and risks to be boring and monotone.
In conclusion, this is for sure an excellent addiction to anyone who likes real music, being very haunting and mysterious in it's distorted despair.