Album review: How to Destroy Angels, 'How to Destroy Angels'
2.5 stars (out of 4)
After putting his two-decade-old Nine Inch Nails on the back-burner last year, Trent Reznor said he needed a fresh start musically. Then he formed a new band – How to Destroy Angels -- with his wife, vocalist Mariqueen Maandig, and longtime NIN collaborator Atticus Ross.
Their six-song EP, "How to Destroy Angels" (Null Corporation), available as a free download at howtodestroyangels.com and for sale as a CD, is hardly a jarring departure from business as usual. The distorted guitars and machine beats of “Parasite,” the synthetic swing of “BBB,” the percolating clatter of “The Believers,” the way “The Space in Between” moves in like a black doom-comes-knocking fog – these could’ve all been easily repackaged as Nine Inch Nails songs and no one would’ve known the difference. Maandig’s voice is nestled inside the mix rather than rising above it – she’s more like another instrument, a ghostly texture in Reznor’s arsenal rather than a more traditional-sounding lead vocalist.
It adds up to more of a transitional work than a reinvention, a placeholder until Reznor’s next major move.
greg@gregkot.com
Reznor had no choice but to give this EP away. No one is interested in distributing this crap. Reznor has been in the business long enough to know that he does not want the numbers from any sales report to become public knowledge. Selling 21 copies to the fat, lonely hearts fan base he has left would be more laughable than this whole project. Having his ... hipster wife front a band is LOL. Next, he going to have his fans tweet lyrics to him for his next EP since he meet his wife on Twitter, engaged in immature Twitter fights, and created Twitter troll accounts to harass ex-fans. I don't believe he wrote Year Zero after this past year's behavior. And he use to say he would know when it was time to stop... Let me help you, it was five years ago.
Posted by: Man Kwan | July 17, 2010 at 03:42 PM
This EP sounds like a smattering of Massive Attack, Portishead, & Ladytron - or trying to pay homage to them?
Not really worth buying this. Just download for free or get it from a friend. I am sorry to say this, but it's not cutting edge and it's not good.
Posted by: Lisa Kimball | August 02, 2010 at 12:38 AM