An unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make.
Trent Reznor
Way to go Trent, step right this way to collect your prize for the salesperson of the year 2016 for your efforts plugging Nine Inch Nails Not The Actual Events. What sort of cloth-eared masocoustic lunatic is going to buy that?
Oh.
I liked the fact that Nine Inch Nails, now Reznor and Atticus Ross, chose to release 3 EPs during 2016-18 rather than slug it out over a whole LP, it better suits how I want to/can consume NIN*.
Not The Actual Events is the first of the unholy trinity and the meanest too; the following year’s Add Violence is a finger-clicking breeze comparatively.
We kick off with the clenched propulsion of ‘Branches/Bones’ that Stooges along nicely with Trent yowling and whispering about spiders, alienation, death and nice cream cakes in that way he does. It’s great and I slightly resent the fact that they chopped it off at 1:46.
Then just to prove how unfriendly and impenetrable it all is we get ‘Dear World’, which is comparatively gentle and bleepy, even essaying a Jean-Michel Jarre melodic swelling at one point. Sure there’s tension hereabouts but this is a veritable lullaby by NIN standards ending with ‘Yes, everyone seems to be asleep‘.
Good luck maintaining said slumber for the duration of ‘She’s Gone Away’. It is a slow burning, abrasive immense loop of doom; it always summons up the image of scouring rust from some vast subterranean war machine to me. Noises skirl and scatter up from the damnable beat, guitars? keys? who knows, it’s not much of a song, more an extended textural workout. Mrs Reznor, Maniqueen Maandig, adds her tones here and there.
Dave Grohl adds drums to the rather fine L.E.D Zeppelin thrust of ‘The Idea Of You’, where Trent whispers and plots away in a substrata my ears can’t quite reach, before it all gets a bit unruly and organic. Quite perfect industrial rock, with a nod to the Houses of the Holy ghost.
Closer ‘Burning Bright (Field On Fire)’ enlists the help of Dave Navarro to add all manner of grimy, fierce guitar tones and drones to something that sounds a bit akin to a cover of ‘Wild Thing’, while Sisters of Mercy synths glide around the edges. Easy listening? no, but hardly impenetrable or actively hostile.
For me Not The Actual Events is not as advertised, at all. Sure nothing here is a candidate for a major soft drinks commercial anytime soon, but neither is it Suicide’s ‘Frankie Teardrop’ or that one where Trent expresses his desire to flick you like an animal.
As always Not The Actual Events is an immaculately crafted, precision-tooled circuit board of a release with just enough organic matter showing at the occasionally jagged edges to prevent sterility and to insure maximum infection from a cut. As usual Alan Moulder mixes, always a further sign of quality.
There ain’t half been some clever bastards, as a wise man once said.
My copy of Not The Actual Events is the standard 12″ one, with the EP on one side and three tracks from The Downward Spiral backwards on the other.
The real cool kids are those who pre-ordered the digital version and were sent a strange packet of lyric sheets, black powder, transparencies and prints, which rubbed off on your hands and possessions, soiling you and all you own. Now that is unfriendly and fairly impenetrable.
1227 Down.
*at 21:08 minutes Not The Actual Events is basically 1.25 Van Halens long.
