Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch
Bad Witch concludes the 3-part NIN cycle that began in 2016 with Not the Actual Events. As if it was not already abundantly clear, frontman/songwriter Trent Reznor has stated this burst of emotion is partly related to Trump’s presidency. Many artists following November 2016 have shown their reaction to the political state in one way or another, and Reznor is both outspoken and musically inflamed in his hatred. It shows most on Bad Witch, perhaps the band’s most experimental release yet. It certainly follows the uncompromising “return to form” approach of the other EPs of the cycle, though it only really ties to the spirit of his original music. Bad Witch is one of the band's most forward-thinking and experimental album yet, and will ultimately remain a testament to the band’s timelessness, following the same nihilistic and brutally emotional approach after all these years while still using new techniques to musically conjure Reznor’s emotional state.
Though maybe not as strong as the classic throwback Add Violence, which blended melody and aggression as well as their best recordings, Bad Witch has a new level of something that makes it stand out as a whole. Perhaps because it is their heaviest album in years, or because of its strong and bleak concept. Regardless, the conceptual weight has given each track its own character, making it worthy of the cliché of "greater than the sum of its parts." It may not make for the easiest listening, but obviously, that is not the intent. Some pieces seem odd and over the top - the strange avant-jazz of "Play the Goddamned Part", the sing-song vocal line of "Ahead of Ourselves", the stark juxtapositions of near silence and deafening screech in "I'm Not from This World." But NIN is going all for effect, not for hooks or ploys. These characteristics end up becoming the meat of Bad Witch, filling out the intricate skeletal arrangements into full-bodied works.
The other three tracks hold the real heart of the album - the contrasts between the assaulting “Shit Mirror” moving through to the crooning of “God Break Down the Door” and the underground club-worthy beats of "Over and Out". This final song takes up eight minutes to complete, a conceptual epic itself within a conceptual monster of an album. This kind of multi-sectioned craziness is what defines the album as a whole, dark and chaotic like the real world. Reznor literally repeats that “time is running out,” because he thinks the apocalypse is just around the corner. Brutal honesty, especially following the Bush-era political stance of Year Zero (2007), is an unmissable feature throughout Reznor’s music, allowing the listener to easily be affected and moved by his compositions. As stated in the single “God Break Down the Door”, the search for answers of this world is over: "you won’t find the answers here, not the ones you came looking for.” This bleak pessimism is the end goal here; Reznor has confirmed this himself. For fans of Nine Inch Nails, an unhappy ending is quite welcomed, and anything else from them would have been very shocking.
A series of EPs is always challenging and usually frowned upon in the musical world. The inability to produce an album usually indicates a deviation, a kind of occasionally fun experiment that is not part of the artists’ official canon. Though marketed as an album, Bad Witch is clearly supposed to be an EP at a length of 30 minutes. However, Trent had always had such a clear and singular vision with his music that despite the odd format the band still hits huge successes here. As well, if he had made us wait until 2018 to release an album, we probably would have less music than the sum of the three EPs. The arc presented in this EP cycle could not fit the singular scope of an album, it had to be processed over time. The results were changed by letting the music speak and pass with time, in a way even Reznor could not predict. In short, it is all a matter of the deep human input from Reznor and collaborator Atticus Ross. And with the current state of things, it’s hard to imagine real human connection without the dark, intense feelings that seem to be occurring in our everyday routine. I applaud their work, knowing it exists at the fullest creative capacity of the two men who created it.
Though maybe not as strong as the classic throwback Add Violence, which blended melody and aggression as well as their best recordings, Bad Witch has a new level of something that makes it stand out as a whole. Perhaps because it is their heaviest album in years, or because of its strong and bleak concept. Regardless, the conceptual weight has given each track its own character, making it worthy of the cliché of "greater than the sum of its parts." It may not make for the easiest listening, but obviously, that is not the intent. Some pieces seem odd and over the top - the strange avant-jazz of "Play the Goddamned Part", the sing-song vocal line of "Ahead of Ourselves", the stark juxtapositions of near silence and deafening screech in "I'm Not from This World." But NIN is going all for effect, not for hooks or ploys. These characteristics end up becoming the meat of Bad Witch, filling out the intricate skeletal arrangements into full-bodied works.
The other three tracks hold the real heart of the album - the contrasts between the assaulting “Shit Mirror” moving through to the crooning of “God Break Down the Door” and the underground club-worthy beats of "Over and Out". This final song takes up eight minutes to complete, a conceptual epic itself within a conceptual monster of an album. This kind of multi-sectioned craziness is what defines the album as a whole, dark and chaotic like the real world. Reznor literally repeats that “time is running out,” because he thinks the apocalypse is just around the corner. Brutal honesty, especially following the Bush-era political stance of Year Zero (2007), is an unmissable feature throughout Reznor’s music, allowing the listener to easily be affected and moved by his compositions. As stated in the single “God Break Down the Door”, the search for answers of this world is over: "you won’t find the answers here, not the ones you came looking for.” This bleak pessimism is the end goal here; Reznor has confirmed this himself. For fans of Nine Inch Nails, an unhappy ending is quite welcomed, and anything else from them would have been very shocking.
A series of EPs is always challenging and usually frowned upon in the musical world. The inability to produce an album usually indicates a deviation, a kind of occasionally fun experiment that is not part of the artists’ official canon. Though marketed as an album, Bad Witch is clearly supposed to be an EP at a length of 30 minutes. However, Trent had always had such a clear and singular vision with his music that despite the odd format the band still hits huge successes here. As well, if he had made us wait until 2018 to release an album, we probably would have less music than the sum of the three EPs. The arc presented in this EP cycle could not fit the singular scope of an album, it had to be processed over time. The results were changed by letting the music speak and pass with time, in a way even Reznor could not predict. In short, it is all a matter of the deep human input from Reznor and collaborator Atticus Ross. And with the current state of things, it’s hard to imagine real human connection without the dark, intense feelings that seem to be occurring in our everyday routine. I applaud their work, knowing it exists at the fullest creative capacity of the two men who created it.
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