Review Summary: The most human electronic album ever
Electronic musicians often struggle to make their music feel alive. Of course it's hard to make electronic noises sound organic, because they clearly aren't, but this hasn't stopped many artists from trying. While some like Kraftwerk accept that electronic music is going to sound robotic, and embrace this fact rather than fight it, NIN does the opposite and manages to successfully create truly emotional electronic music. The collection of these successes is Pretty Hate Machine.
PHM is a fairly angry album. While it never reaches Strapping Young Lad levels of rage, it is defiantly the product of a man who wasn't exactly happy. From "Terrible Lie" dealing with feeling like religion is a lie, to "Head Like A Hole" being a rant about capitalism (well, about greed, but there is a pretty obvious anti-capitalism theme here), this isn't an album to listen to with your date. While the lyrics really take back seat to the music, and serve more to help the tone of the music, they are good. While being subtle isn't among Trent Reznor's strengths, he makes up for this by being 100% clear and honest. Instead of trying to write poetry about how he feels, he comes right out and says it, which is poetry in it's own right. Not to say he doesn't have intelligent lyrics, but that he prioritizes raw emotion over complex wordplay. I love word-craft as much as the next guy, but there is something to be said about music where the singer emotionally strips down and exposes him/herself completely. Unlike other artists who try this, Trent never sounds whiny or anything, he was far too angry to be complaining about stuff, he was truly pissed. Again, this is 100% to his advantage.
Musically, PHM is a pretty strange album. Every song here is super catchy and somehow rides between mirroring the music, and being the complete opposite. The music here is poppy, but it sounds uncomfortable. Like a serial killer trying to act like everyone else, but about to snap at any moment and destroy anything in his path, showing his true nature. While The Downward Spiral would take this sound further, I think it works better here. There it does go into the rage instead of barely containing it like here. While I can enjoy those for a time, I think this sound makes for a better overall album (not to diss on the Downward Spiral, that album is 100% genius in it's own right).
The thing that makes Pretty Hate Machine stick out from the industrial crowd, is that instead of pummeling the listener with mechanical noise, it lets those "walls of sound" take a back seat to catchy melodies and atmosphere. It has moments of industrial, but this album is above all else an atmospheric pop album. While hardcore industrial fans probably aren't a fan of that, PHM is honestly a better album for it. Like I said, it is an industrial album that manages to be human but still robotic. A cyborg, torn between the mechanical efficiency of robotics and the emotional roller-coaster of humanity. If you enjoy music in general, you need to at least give it a chance. Honestly one of the best albums I've listened to ever.
