Saturday, 27 August 2016

All Songs, Best to Worst: Nine Inch Nails

Time for another ranking of all of an artist's songs. This week I'm evaluating every song of one of my favourite bands of the past few years, Nine Inch Nails. What can you say about NIN? They're one of the greatest industrial groups ever and certainly the most commercially successful. With a career spanning approximately 28 years and eight full-length albums the group's sound has definitely evolved, covering such genres as dark synth-pop, industrial metal, art rock, electronica, and even dark ambient. It's not often that you'll hear two NIN albums that sound alike. What's really cool about Nine Inch Nails is that even though they're an industrial act their music isn't that hard to get into. While it often does include noise and distortion – as industrial groups are wont to do – NIN seldom shifts focus away from the melody and the dynamic and intense vocals of frontman Trent Reznor, making the music easier to digest. The lyrics are always captivating, focusing mostly on the exploration of the self (with occasional exceptions as with the album Year Zero). The first NIN album I listened to was 2005's With Teeth and I've been hooked ever since.
So let's rank these bad boys, shall we? The rules: what's included here is 7 studio albums as well as the one EP, Broken. I'm not including Ghosts I-IV, which is composed of 36 instrumental tracks that don't even have names. It's not a bad album, but I can't even remember half of its songs, let alone their titles! Also, no remixes, live tracks, or singles (like “Deep” or “The Perfect Drug”). Let's go.

1. “Closer”, The Downward Spiral (1994)
2. “Hurt”, TDS
3. “Mr. Self-Destruct”, TDS
4. “Down in It”, Pretty Hate Machine (1989)
5. “Happiness in Slavery”, Broken (1992)
6. “Reptile”, TDS
7. “Head Like A Hole”, PHM
8. “Wish”, Broken
9. “March of the Pigs”, TDS
10. “Sunspots”, With Teeth (2005)
11. “Even Deeper”, The Fragile (1999)
12. “Piggy”, TDS
13. “The Hand that Feeds”, WT
14. “Only”, WT
15. “Echoplex”, The Slip (2008)
16. “All Time Low”, Hesitation Marks (2013)
17. “Pinion”, Broken
18. “Last”, Broken
19. “Every Day is Exactly the Same”, WT
20. “La Mer”, TF
21. “Terrible Lie”, PHM
22. “All the Love in the World”, WT
23. “Copy of A”, HM
24. “Various Methods of Escape”, HM
25. “I'm Looking Forward to Joining You Finally”, TF
26. “Came Back Haunted”, HM
27. “Eraser”, TDS
28. “Ripe (With Decay)”, TF
29. “Where is Everybody?”, TF
30. “The Mark Has Been Made”, TF
31. “Gave Up”, Broken
32. “Right Where it Belongs”, WT
33. “Me, I'm Not”, Year Zero (2007)
34. “The Warning”, Y0
35. “Somewhat Damaged”, TF
36. “That's What I Get”, PHM
37. “Demon Seed”, TS
38. “The Downward Spiral”, TDS
39. “Letting You”, TS
40. “The Great Below”, TF
41. “Something I Can Never Have”, PHM
42. “Find My Way”, HM
43. “The Good Soldier”, Y0
44. “Help Me I Am in Hell”, Broken
45. “The Way Out is Through”, TF
46. “Discipline”, TS
47. “We're in This Together”, TF
48. “Sanctified”, PHM
49. “Beside You in Time”, WT
50. “Into the Void”, TF
51. “Satellite”, HM
52. “The New Flesh”, TF
53. “The Becoming”, TDS
54. “The Greater Good”, Y0
55. “The Day the World Went Away”, TF
56. “Starfuckers, Inc.”, TF
57. “Zero-Sum”, Y0
58. “Survivalism”, Y0
59. “With Teeth”, WT
60. “The Wretched”, TF
61. “The Frail”, TF
62. “Ruiner”, TDS
63. “No, You Don't”, TF
64. “The Fragile”, TF
65. “Everything”, HM
66. “Physical (You're So)”, Broken
67. “Capital G”, Y0
68. “Vessel”, Y0
69. “God Given”, Y0
70. “Head Down”, TS
71. “The Line Begins to Blur”, WT
72. “Just Like You Imagined”, TF
73. “Love is Not Enough”, WT
74. “Corona Radiata”, TS
75. “The Four of Us Are Dying”, TS
76. “Pilgrimage”, TF
77. “Complication”, TF
78. “+Appendage”, TF
79. “Getting Smaller”, WT
80. “Underneath It All”, TF
81. “1,000,000”, TS
82. “10 Miles High”, TF
83. “Please”, TF
84. “I Would for You”, HM
85. “Sin”, PHM
86. “The Collector”, WT
87. “In Two”, HM
88. “Ringfinger”, PHM
89. “I Do Not Want This”, TDS
90. “The Beginning of the End”, Y0
91. “Suck”, Broken
92. “Kinda I Want To”, PHM
93. “The Big Come Down”, TF
94. “A Warm Place”, TDS
95. “Lights in the Sky”, TS
96. “Disappointed”, HM
97. “You Know What You Are?”, WT
98. “Meet Your Master”, Y0
99. “Big Man With a Gun”, TDS
100. “The Only Time”, PHM
101. “Hyperpower”, Y0
102. “Running”, HM
103. “My Violent Heart”, Y0
104. “Home”, WT
105. “The Great Destroyer”, Y0
106. “In This Twilight”, Y0
107. “While I'm Still Here”, HM
108. “Black Noise”, HM
109. “The Eater of Dreams”, HM
110. “999,999”, TS
111. “Heresy”, TDS


No comments:

Post a Comment