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Album Review: 'Not The Actual Events' by Nine Inch Nails
Not The Actual Events, while not a full-length album, is a release that sustains the high-quality standards of NIN. Like Reznor wrote in its press release, the EP (Extended Play) is “an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make.”
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Not The Actual Events by Nine Inch Nails (The Null Corporation/File)
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arlier this year Nine Inch Nails’ mastermind Trent Reznor (he is Nine Inch Nails) set high expectations by announcing that his band would have a new release out before the end of the year.
By December, the fans were beginning to get anxious. Will the reigning king of industrial rock manage to keep his word? Ever since Nine Inch Nails (NIN) came back from their short 4-year “break up” with 2013’s Hesitation Marks, Reznor and Atticus Reznor have kept very busy making soundscapes for their soundtrack projects (David Fincher’s The Social Network, which won them a Grammy, and more-recently, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood documentary, among notable others).
Will Reznor still have time for his main band — the one that formed in 1989 and went on to record and release many acclaimed albums, EPs, remixes, and singles, and had a cult-like fanbase? Unsurprisingly, Reznor did. Not The Actual Events, while not a full-length album, is a release that sustains the high-quality standards of NIN. Like Reznor wrote in its press release, the EP (Extended Play) is “an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make.”
While harshness and aggression is certainly not a new element in NIN’s music, a few of the EP’s tracks are certainly infused with the grim, minimalist flourish of older industrial music, a genre that is described as taking the “most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock and electronic music” by AllMusic.
With Ross now an official member, that sense of nuance that has been the hallmark of NIN’s music has elevated. Desperation, disappointment, and exasperation embodies the record’s theme, with ambient heavy sound effects that sounds like everything from broken machines to sampled-electronic hisses running through the tracks.
“Burning Bright (Field on Fire)” sees Reznor’s voice buried, sounding like it’s fighting its way out of a wind-tunnel or machine-like low ends — robotic synth-bass, distant machine drums, and overwhelming distortions. By the time Reznor gets to the section where he sings “Break through the surface and (Breathe, breathe, breathe)”, the atmosphere lightens and for a brief moment, Reznor’s voice finds clarity. It’s this theme of fighting-against-over-whelming-odds that adds a layer of almost-romantic optimism that hasn’t always been there in NIN’s music.
The short-and-succinct 1 minute and 46 seconds of “Branches/ Bones” harkens back to the best tracks off of Hesitation Marks. Cinematic dynamics propelled with crunchy guitars and a quasi-playful chorus that is both disturbing and catchy. “Cold and black and infinite, with nothing left to lose, If you try to keep the flies away, the makeup hides the bruise” sings Reznor poetically before jumping onto its chorus — “Feels like I’ve been here before, Yeah, I don’t know anymore, And I don’t care anymore,” which feels like either a defeatist shrug or triumphant contentment.
The electronic blips of “Dear World” is close to the prog-electronica touches 1999’s double album The Fragile (which is also getting the enhanced re-release treatment) as well as 2005’s more-direct “With Teeth”. Build upon a stuttering, almost-funky, rhythm, the song moves with an immediacy and is relatively-penetrable.
“She’s Gone Away”, which includes the guest vocals of Reznor bandmate in “How To Destroy Angels” and wife Mariqueen Maandig is a downbeat, dark track with static percussive work throughout and Reznor’s deep growls. It is followed by the record’s most-immediate and strongest track, “The Idea of You”. Propelled by guest drummer Dave Grohl’s (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) solid drumming, the song is a stage-ready rocker filled with chanting, overlaid vocals.
“It’s an EP because that ended up being the proper length to tell that story”, wrote Reznor on the record’s press release, and while its impenetrability isn’t as challenging as Reznor makes it out to be, Not The Actual Events is an incredibly strong EP that feels complete and thorough. It has all of the expected grimness and grittiness fans would expect from NIN, with a production flourish that shows why Reznor and Ross has done so well in painting the aural landscapes of their sound track movie works.
