NINE INCH NAILS — Pretty Hate Machine (review)

NINE INCH NAILS — Pretty Hate Machine album cover Album · 1989 · Non-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Negoba
Angst Filled Powerful Debut

Pretty Hate Machine had to be one of the most groundbreaking debut albums ever. While Ministry was making inroads into metal at the same time, Trent Reznor combined Industrial Composition with metal edge to create a record that would influence hundred if not thousands of bands to come.

"Head Like a Hole," aside from being a completely fresh and powerful sound at the time, is simply one of the best songs expressing anger ever recorded. It has two of the best hook lines of all metal in "Bow Down Before the One You Serve," and "Head Like a Hole, Black as Your Soul, I'd Rather Die than Give You Control." The music is throbbing and brutal. The vocals drip with pain. In 1989, this was simply amazing music.

Though there are some other great songs on the album "Terrible Lie," "Something I Can Never Have," the album gets a little same-y by the end. Reznor will go on to become one of the biggest stars of the 90's with even more depraved inner darkness. But this is the beginning, the source of it all. Without this there is no Rob Zombie, no Marilyn Manson (an artist that Reznor transformed into a sideshow into a major rockstar).

Essential industrial. Down to four stars as it's industrial first and metal more in feel, and the failure to maintain the power.
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