This record reminds me a lot of NIN's 1999 release The Fragile. Both sound great playing loud while writing XHTML code. When I was a full-time Web developer I listened to The Fragile a lot while I wrote code.

I don't mean to suggest by it reminding me of The Fragile or even parts of The Downward Spiral to say that is not a good thing. I have both of these plus Pretty Hate Machine and love them all. NIN has such a trademark sound there's really no getting away from it without becoming another band. I mean, what would we do if Nine Inch Nails started producing happy music???

Trent Reznor is a sonic god. He manipulates distortion and still has some melody in there. This is some of the best headphones music to come out since Pink Floyd. Thanks to NIN, my four root canals have been most enjoyable. Get the nitrous going and Nine Inch Nails blasting through the headphones and I don't care what goes on in my mouth. It's almost a bummer when it's over. Just listening to "Beside You in Time" practically makes me want to run out and get another root canal. (I must add that Beck's "Novacane" and all of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade are also recommended root canal music.)

So next time you have to get some serious dental work done, grab your CD player and go With Teeth.

The Amazon button right under the record cover to the right goes to the regular CD. I have also included a button for the DualDisc, but since I don't have that one, I just made it a secondary link in case you want to check that out.

-- May 22, 2005 (DD)