What becomes of your identity when you realise numbing your pain no longer soothes – that becoming an ordinary healthy member of society is safer? With Teeth, the 4th studio album by industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, grapples with the push and pull of recovery. To celebrate its 20th anniversary this year, and because NIN just released their first soundtrack album for TRON: Ares, we’re diving back into the iconic album.
A little over 5 years after the release of NIN’s masterpiece third studio album, The Fragile (1999), With Teeth is noted for its major departure in production, instrumentation and tone for NIN’s then sole member, Trent Reznor. More rock than industrial, With Teeth’s release was highly anticipated due to the amount of time Reznor took in completing the record. Facing writer’s block and personal demons after completing The Fragile’s Fragility Tour, Reznor spent some time falling into his darkness before he was able to climb out and create again. Despite With Teeth not being a concept album as it was originally intended, the songwriting and themes on self-criticism, recovery and one’s relationship within and with the world pierce through and are transparently vulnerable.
Because of the lapsed time between albums, NIN’s sound had evolved alongside technological change that was happening when the 90s phased into the early 2000s. As the internet and computing become more affordable and accessible, Reznor sought out and utilised new digital tools. To contradict the album’s technologically advanced sound, With Teeth happens to include tape delays, analog modular synthesisers and non-programmed instrumentation. Speaking to Keyboard Magazine in 2005, Reznor said, “on the record we had modules from Doepfer, Analogue Systems, and some from Metasonix. We also used a Minimoog Voyager, and this cool suitcase synth from Analogue Solutions called the Vostok.” Because the album has a 5.1 surround sound mix, it (to this day) has a reputation of being played in Hi-Fi stores when testing speakers and audio quality. Another reason why With Teeth stands out from all other Nine Inch Nails records is because Reznor brought on the one and only Dave Grohl for its drumming. Future NIN member Atticus Ross helped programme and produce the record alongside Reznor and longtime NIN producer Alan Moulder.
The album includes some of NIN’s most well known and celebrated singles. With over 169 million streams on Spotify alone, With Teeth’s lead single ‘The Hand That Feeds’ is one of NIN’s most streamed and popular songs of all time. Groovy and uplifting, the songs lyrics contrast the production by being quite bleak: “you’re keeping in step in the line / got your chin held high and you feel just fine ‘cause you do what you’re told / but inside your heart, it is black and it’s hollow and it’s cold.” A half decade before Reznor and now second member of NIN, Atticus Ross, went on to score their Academy Award winning debut film score for David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), Fincher directed the CGI-heavy music video for With Teeth’s second single, ‘Only’. Notably one of Nine Inch Nails’ most famous and highly-regarded music videos for how strikingly different the visuals are for the band, Fincher’s video for ‘Only’ depicts Reznor’s molded face through the vibrating and rippling of a pinscreen. The beat of the song also causes motion of a Newton’s cradle and laptop screensaver. The album’s third and final single, ‘Everyday Is Exactly The Same’, received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance. The song deals with Reznor’s perspective of being numbed out and feeling suffocated by those watching over him while getting out of his destructive and predictable cycle.
All songs from the record deserve spotlighting, but there are a few non-singles that are worth diving into. In classic NIN fashion, the album has roaring synth and drumming sections which could bleed through any speaker. This is best shown on ‘You Know What You Are?’ and ‘Sunspots’. ‘You Know What You Are?’ is full of distorted guitars, erratic drumming from Grohl and brings the album’s undertones of personal critique to the surface as Reznor growls at himself in a defeatist tone. On the album closer, ‘Right Where It Belongs’, Reznor alludes to living a life of sobriety and good health is similar to being a caged bird. “See the safety of the life you have built / everything where it belongs / feel the hollowness inside of your heart / and it’s all-right where it belongs,” he sings, sorrowful. The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile saw Reznor revel in his debauchery, chaos and nihilistic perspective, whereas on With Teeth he realised, in time, that feeling ordinary can keep you alive. No human wants to feel ordinary, and the irony in Reznor feeling that way is he could never be ordinary: he’s one of the most significant and talented musicians of all time.
Nine Inch Nails’ new album soundtrack for TRON: Ares is an ode to the band’s career-long innovative approach to both analog and digital production, as perfectly exemplified on With Teeth two decades prior. Time may march on, but Reznor’s craft and artistic genius remains timeless.
Stream Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth below!
