NINE INCH NAILS NIN With Teeth

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Also Includes "Home" Available Only On Vinyl. Quite frankly, this is the record that NIN should have released if Reznor had wanted to capitalize on the success of The Downward Spiral. It's loud and angry, doesn't skimp on hooks, and is heavy on both sexy robotic dance beats and crashing rock rhythms (some supplied by everybody's favorite drummer, Dave Grohl, but not that you'd know it from reading the CD; the chintzy packaging not only has no credits, it has no booklet) -- all things that made "Closer" an alt-rock classic. But for all the surface similarities to his past albums, there is a palpable difference in tone and approach on With Teeth. This is the work of a craftsman, a musician who meticulously assembles his work by layering details so densely, there's never a moment on the record where something isn't roiling under the surface, where something isn't added to the mix. He's good at this, though. With Teeth is an impressive achievement technically and the music is generally strong, yet there's a nagging problem -- namely, there's nothing new here. It's not that Reznoris recycling himself -- he's far too compulsive a craftsman for that -- but he's not pushing himself, either, preferring to work within the box he created himself ten years ago. Consequently, the music sounds as if it comfortably could have been released in 1996, the time when Reznor's style of music was at its popular peak. There's nothing wrong with that -- plenty of rock and pop musicians are craftsmen, working the same sound and finding interesting variations within it -- but there's something awkward about an industrial craftsman, or at least as how it's practiced by Reznor. His biggest problem is that while he shows considerable skill, even subtlety, in his music, the tortured sentiments of his lyrics are frozen in amber. They're eternally adolescent and they sound juvenile, even embarrassing, coming from a man on the verge of his 40th birthday. These words work when sung by a young man, when they're sung with a sense of urgency, but "urgency" is not a word that can be associated with NIN, even on a record like this that takes great pains to sound visceral and alive. Reznor is too insulated, too shut out from the outside world, too unconcerned with pleasing anybody but himself to make anything close to urgent. Without that sense of hunger, his music doesn't have mass appeal, leaving it to the hardcore who appreciate his sense of craft and construction, listeners who are eager to listen to the album enough times to memorize the details. In short, the same listeners who had the patience to learn how to love The Fragile will learn how to love With Teeth.ALL MUSIC GUIDE.