#765 How to Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion

Where would Trent Reznor be without Atticus Ross? Their extended collaboration began when Ross was an engineer on WITH_TEETH, then a co-producer on Year Zero, then a co-writer of all the songs on Ghosts I-IV, and a full-on, top-billing collaborator for the Academy Award-winning soundtrack for The Social Network - quite the ascent!

The songs followed a similar upward trajectory. Previously, Reznor had been on a downward spiral into murk and guitar noise, bottoming out circa The Fragile, and album that left many wondering if there was anywhere left for Nine Inch Nails to go, if screaming and silence and rock oppression had any surprises left to deliver. But with Ross on board, the sound took a side tunnel into uncanny, otherworldly spaces, where texture and ambiance delivered more uncanny thrills than raw power ever could. The Social Network soundtrack, in particular, was the perfect expression of prickly, dangerous ambition, and one of my favorite albums of that year.

Here, though, the ascent gets sidetracked. There are flashes of brilliance, of electricity, of eerie atmosphere, but also a weird lean into pop grasping that's totally at odds with the sound. Reznor and Ross's previous material worked because it was outside of taste and humanity and time, hitching its wagon to some Lovecraftian fever-dream. Any attempt to make music for the masses, even the faintest gesture in that direction, and a curtain falls and the illusion snaps.

Too many songs here strive to be cool and instead come across like that rave scene in The Matrix Reloaded, landing with a 2003 Hot Topic thud. Furthermore, what does Reznor wife Mariqueen Maandig bring to the table exactly? I mean, other than making the band sound 500% more like Evanesence? It reeks of a vanity project, a grab at popularity, and a watering down of the Reznor / Ross sounds. The noises and surges and sub-notes on the disc are almost as good as before, but in that gap, in that uncomplete commitement to the project, the magic is lost 3/5