With this Saturday's Nine Inch Nails/Soundgarden supershow at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, now with added opener The Dillinger Escape Plan to make it even sweeter, we're digging deep into our collections of their records, stripping them for all their best parts.
Nine Inch Nails is the kind of band who are fairly dependable. Trent Reznor writes very much in the mode of either angry or depressed. He's strayed from the formula plenty, but rarely so far as to shock anyone. However, these five really stood out as the most shocking turns Reznor has taken in his 25-year career.
5. "Purest Feeling" One of the first and weirdest Nine Inch Nails tracks ever recorded, "Purest Feeling" has never surfaced outside of the band's original demo. There's a good reason for that; it's not indicative at all of the eventual direction the band would take, but rather of Reznor's origins in '80s synth-pop and New Wave bands.
Still, for those of us dedicated enough to put up with the same-titled demo's very shoddy sound quality, "Purest Feeling" is a fun, bouncy track that could have easily been recorded by Reznor's idols, Depeche Mode.
4. "Ruiner" When you're listening to it for the first time, "Ruiner" probably sounds like a fairly typical Nine Inch Nails track, at least for a little while. Certainly you wouldn't be shocked to find out who recorded the song.
The surprising part about this one comes right smack-dab in the middle. It slows down, it gets really quiet, and then...there's a guitar solo. To date, "Ruiner" is one of the only tracks in the entire NIN discography to feature a real-deal, classic-rock guitar solo.
3. "The Hand That Feeds" Prior to 2005, many might have thought Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails were done. He had descended deep into his drug habit following The Fragile, the band had gone into a period of inactivity, and the band's music had become more and more dense and incomprehensible to casual fans. Though The Fragile is highly regarded now, many considered it an overwrought failure upon its release.
Then Reznor cleaned up, got healthy and buff as hell, and recorded a new record. "The Hand That Feeds" announced the band's return after six years, and it was a shock. After all the increasingly experimental, ambient music Reznor had recorded for The Fragile, the opening disco beat that announced his return was something fans never saw coming. Some were happy, some weren't, but it became a massive hit all the same.
List continues on the next page.
