Nine Inch Nails - Things Falling Apart

List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $6.12
You Save: $3.86 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.26 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details

CD Details

• NINE INCH NAILS THINGS FALLING APART

Music reviews of Things Falling Apart

Music Review: Helix scatterproof
Rating: 4 Stars

"Slipping away" begins the album with a distinctly spooky feel, featuring sighing string arrangements and slightly growling guitars over a strong mid-tempo rhythm, and the way Reznor brings the song to a climax is simply brilliant. Many of the remixes here seem to have an added edge, particularly the uncanny "The great collapse", containing an understated two-chord piano line and various intriguing splinters of other instruments behind a strong central beat and occasional sequencer burblings. "The wretched" and "Where is.." with Reznor's talk-singing are not so interesting, but have an unmistakable sense of how to frame his voice with alternately quiet and confrontational arrangements. One of this album's highlights is the short mix of "The frail", a neo-classical piece which provides a convenient break in the listening program. Unfortunately, the album is somewhat flawed by these three "Starfuckers Inc." remixes. With too many layers of childish sound effects, Sherwood's and Ogilvie's versions of this song do not only miss any musical sensibility, they also feel out of place among the other songs. One has to be careful when painting with too many colors not to end up with a shoddy picture, and exactly this does happen here. Now, there's the 7-minute cover version of Gary Numan's "Metal", it's twice as long as the original song. "Metal" originally appeared on Numan's 1979 album "The pleasure principle", and as far as I know, it was never released as a single. In my opinion, it's not a classic and not among Numan's most memorable songs ("Cars", "We are glass", "Are friends electric?"). Reznor transfers the song's heavy sequencer/synth patterns into a more industrial setting and adds a fairly lengthy acoustic guitar outro for a slightly disturbing but still quite relaxing atmosphere. If you are interested in Numan covers, you should probably check out the tribute album "Random", a double-disc set with cover versions from the likes of The Orb, Moloko, and Blur. After the aggressive "10 miles high", things calm down again: Clouser's mix of "Starf-----s Inc." begins very beautifully with static ambient sounds and pulsating beats which are somewhat reminiscent of Brian Eno's famous ambient works. After this sublime opening section, we are exposed to the same aimless and boring industrial hotchpotch as on the other two "Starf-----s Inc." mixes.

On reading this review you may have noticed the constant references to different sounds and other electronica artists, and indeed, "TFA" has its roots in industrial rock and synth pop, but it adds so many elements from other styles that the listener's mind isn't left to wander. Apart from the redundant "Starf-----s Inc." versions, this is really an album I can recommend without reservation, especially for the newly interested.

Description of Things Falling Apart

Alternative Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Dance & Electronic
• Hard Rock & Metal
• Pop
• Rock