NIN: "Hesitation Marks"

Before electronic dance music was considered a real genre and before most people reading this review were born, Nine Inch Nails released their first album. It was 1989, and music journalists everywhere were searching for a term to describe Trent Reznor’s hand-crafted layers of synth, drums and guitar.

They landed on “industrial rock,” and twenty-four years, two kids and one Oscar later, Reznor is back with his eighth Nine Inch Nails album, “Hesitation Marks.”

Fans worried a new album would come back soft, like the efforts of some other 1990s alt-rock peers, for example, Pearl Jam’s “Backspacer” — still not sure what to expect of their upcoming “Lightning Bolt” in October. But with lyrics like “The fire illuminates the final scene/The past repeats itself/I cannot tell the difference anymore,” this album does not disappoint. It’s dark and well-planned, and Reznor continues to show he is one of music’s best artists out there in “All Time Low.”

Though “Hesitation Marks” never seems to reach the wrist-slitting rage levels of “I want to f**** you like an animal,” Reznor still seems pretty pissed off. Even Reznor’s voice, which has been perfectly maintained over the past twenty years, almost tricks the ear into sounding like the 1994 hit “Closer” during the bridge of “Came Back Haunted.”  

The album’s sound follows the same vein of previous albums and is consistent throughout. And it stays relevant in songs like “I Would For You” that have hints of modern EDM influence.  

Nine Inch Nails is re-entering the music scene at a time very different than their first entrance. In 1991 they played alongside Jane’s Addiction and Butthole Surfers in the first ever Lollapalooza, but when they returned to the stage this year, it was alongside a new sound of Top 40 acts like Ellie Goulding, Imagine Dragons and Mumford and Sons.  

Whether or not this album attracts the 20-year-olds it did in the early 1990s or just maintains those fans who are now in their 40s is the real question.