NIN Lashes Out with "Hesitation Marks"

Trent Reznor released his latest album on September 3rd titled "Hesitation Marks".  In Hesitation Marks, you can hear the culmination of Trent's 24 years of experimentation with music and sounds.  Some tracks stay true to the NIN dark, industrial sounds and background artifacts, while other tracks stray radically from Trent's signature sounds.  However, if you're a devout NIN listener, you'll realize this is what makes NIN, NIN.  It seems like he tries to reinvent himself in many ways with each new album or collaboration.

Hesitation Marks is Trent's re-emmergence into NIN after the hiatus when he collaborated with Atticus Ross for multiple scores such as "The Social Network" and the theme song for "Call of Duty Black Ops II", and also formed the group "How to Destroy Angels" with his new wife Mariqeen Maandig.  Hat's off to you Trent for staying very busy and still tacking time to come back to your roots.

Time to rip it up!:

Killer Tracks:

Track #12 - "In Two" - It begins with haunting sounds reminiscent from "Further Down the Spiral" and thrusts right into hard hitting bass sounds that bring back memories of his "Slip" album and also conjure up the good old days of rhythms from KMFDM.  You don't have to wait long to also catch glimpses of the signature flat note muted guitar rifts.

Track #8 - "Satellite" - Continuing with the "Year Zero" album theme, NIN again exercises his angst with the federal government and its every-increasing encroachment on civil liberties and survelance.  As with Year Zero, Satellite has more of a story to tell with the lyrics than trying to evoke emotions through the sounds.  The beat is simple and catchy.

Track #5 - "All Time Low"  - This is a faster and more-bluesy version of his "Good Soldier" from Year Zero album.  Like "Satellite", All Time Low has a simple beat and focuses more on the lyrics.

Track #2 - "Copy of A" - Don't listen to this track unless you have access to some good subwoofers with low frequency responses.  The intermittent 8th-note bass beat will make your brain cells rattle.  For lyrics, Trent again makes good use of his stutter-clipped repeating vocals, that I personally think he mastered in his "Star Fuckers Inc." song.

Track #4 - "Find My Way" -  This slower song is perfectly placed in the album to give the listener a break from Trent's busier tracks.  Also the gentle lyrics remind me of TweakerRay's remix of NIN's "Perfect Drug" song.

Others:

Track #7 - "Everything" - When I first listened to this track I thought "WTF!", "Good for you Trent!", "Wow!", "Are you out of your fucking mind!", all at the same time.  I really don't know what Trent was thinking when he came up with this song.  It's just too pop-ish for me.  But then again, Trent was never in the business of pleasing everybody.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this album to those who appreciate NIN's versatility in the music industry.