The Listening Room

I decided to reach back a bit earlier in our club's time period this week to hopefully set up some future selections. Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em was my first cassette tape, so Pretty Hate Machine was a year early and way out of my ballpark when I first really started digging into music. I discovered Metallica's black album and Tool's Undertow 2-3 years after, though, and had a pretty big metal phase that followed. Now a solid 30 years later, I've found that the music I most often revisit from that time are the bands that flirted with electronic/industrial vibes. I still love The Deftones. Still revisit Orgy every so often. There's something so cool about a sound that was (imo) ahead of it's time. So as I flirted with selecting some metal from the late 90s I had the idea to try and go back to a piece of the origin story with that genre. Hope it's good!

This NIN cassette was in my car tape deck all through 1996. Thanks for the lookback!

I'll go ahead and admit this up front; I've never listened to NIN apart from what's been thrust upon me on a track-by-track basis (or when Johnny Cash finds salvation). So listening to this album was basically my introduction to them as a band. And it's good! I have a feeling I'd like some of their later material better; while I really vibe with the industrial sound and electronic components, you can tell that it's holding onto the vestiges of my least favorite parts of 80s music (reverb-filled snares, the dancey-beats that defined the era). I can see the thread of this album being pulled into the next decade, both within industrial but also the adjacent genres like nu metal, and for that I have a newfound appreciation for that section of my musical timeline. And that's not to say this album is bad, I quite like all the tracks and what they provide and present. It's just that for me, it's hard to look past the bits of yesteryear that are sprinkled into a debut effort that is otherwise so fresh and new that in hindsight, you wonder why he even needed to lean into it.

Before I get clowned, yes I know I use "they" when it's really just Trent.

My read on Pretty Hate Machine isn't far off from @beachcomberradio's. I think some of the traits of the album that were knocked, though, are the things that I really appreciate about it. The industrial sounds that NIN helped to popularize are pervasive throughout this album...and they aren't always easy on the ears. Much of it feels abrasive. It can be startling. And a lot of it is repetitive. Filling the sound between those themes, though, are a bunch of ear worm beats and memorable melodies that feel of that time in music. The album's tentacles reached out into pop music, EDM, funk, and even hip-hop. The album felt surprisingly diverse for a band that has always been billed as an icon of a somewhat narrow genre. Despite that range, the album felt super cohesive. It immediately drew me back in for a second listen. This one is probably sticking around for a bit. Onto the next one.

Hahahaha....great reco @zprofound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ta7mkgrOU The top comment kills me: I came here to laugh, not die inside. If you're into degenerate puppets check out Meet the Feebles. It's one of Peter Jackson's early films. Thank me later. (cc: @MC_Benski for the movie memories)

So this might only be available as a long lost mp3 but when I discovered this I also found more sad Kermit songs including… something I can never have! That was interesting.

In my top 10 albums of all time