Can someone leak this already?
Apparently a low quality version of it is leaked from one of the listening parties they’ve had.
320kbps and VBR rips are all over demonoid now. good quality, not the listening party recording, but still has some issues. the album is very electronic and sounds nothing like with teeth.
you can stream the entire album on nin’s site:
But upon listening to it i cannot recommend doing so.
I’ve gotten to track 12. So far I think it’s one of the best things he’s released in awhile. A lot better than With Teeth.
Marginally better than With Teeth, but still disappointing. There’s something about the sound of the drums on the last two albums that really bothers me. Too crisp, thin, buzzy, poppy, clean… Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, but I like his older songs where the drums are fat and punchy, and sounded like they came from a sampler or synth, and not software. The newer drums leave some of the songs sounding a little ‘dry’, in my opinion.
Standouts for me are The Beginning of The End (very Joy Division sounding, don’t you think?), and My Violent Heart. God Given is pretty horrible.
I think the last song he wrote that I thoroughly enjoyed was The Perfect Drug. Yikes, that was a while ago!
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i like the first half of it somewhat, but it’s super-fast downhill after that. i don’t like stuff like ‘my violent heart’ choruses, it sounds like it was forced. i like pop ‘melodic’ with teeth better, actually. also it’s super boring to play bass parts from it, except “the warning”, that was cool. took me like 30 mins to figure the whole album out…
I like it.
The synths sometimes remind me of Coil’s “Scatology”
I think it’s really really good. If you’re gonna steal it, get the 256 kps rip that’s on Demonoid, it’s sourced off of the files in the yz site player. That might be what the spiral site has, I don’t know since I haven’t checked there.
I’m really impressed with the new album. While I also liked With Teeth, it was pretty much a pop/rock album, while this one goes in the exact opposite direction with lots of abrasive electronic noises. I’m also impressed that they put up a high quality easily downloadable 256kpbs web stream of this, rather than the low-quality bandwidth-friendly crap that you usually get in a stream.
Got it Tuesday and have had it on constant play. I freakin’ love it. Right now “Vessel” and “Great Destroyer” are my favorites. I love how “GD” starts as the pop hit of the album has a Queen harmony vocal riff and then descends into a beautiful noise beat collage. Brilliant stuff. If I keep liking it this much this may be my favorite industrial album of the decade.
After listening to it about 4 or 5 times, I’m just sort of ‘meh’ about it. A few solid songs, but there are some annoying parts on the album where it seems like the music is noisy merely for the sake of being noisy…if that makes any sense. I can’t put a finger on it, but the noise is more synthetic than organic - it’s not crushingly aggressive…it’s too buzzy and fizzy. You can almost see him (or whoever’s doing the programming) just twiddling the analog knobs during the recording. It’s still better than With Teeth, but not more than anything else he’s done (not counting the crap from '87-88, of course). This album just doesn’t punch me in the face enough to make an impression. “My Violent Heart” and “The Beginning of The End” are still my favorites.
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I’m still kind of up in the air about it.
I think it’s maybe a little too tied into the ARG - you can enjoy the album without spending hours dicking around with online puzzles and research, but you can’t really understand it. It’s a neat concept, but it’s also distracting from the music, which should be his main focus.
there are some annoying parts on the album where it seems like the music is noisy merely for the sake of being noisy
that’s what i still feel about the downward spiral actually. yep, it also applies to year zero. fragile and with teeth both had more “songy” songs so to speak… he should stop trying to be “noisty” and “industrialish” as he never was and probably never will be, and he knows it - he himself stated that nin is pop music.
at least year zero started that whole craze to keep 15 year old fans super-interested… recently they set up a “secret” show which was “busted” by swat like in “survivalism” music video after 6 or 7 songs.
oh, all that and allowing to listen to the whole album online. that was a good move on reznor’s part.
what i don’t like about YZ is “the greater good” and “another version of truth” - they slow down the album alot plus the final track drags on for too long.
also with all that shit he could at least make nice transitions from track to track like he did with most of the tracks on the fragile which was very nice gimmick.
I love it. I think its far stronger than "with Teeth’ which I also really liked. Sure, it seems a bit noisey at times, and Reznor has stated that its noisey. Fuck, it even says that on the sticker on the plastic wrap the CD comes in. I think the strongest tracks are Zero Sum and A Warning. This is his best CD since “The Downward Spiral.” I haven’t been able to take it out of my CD player. For the first CD I have bought this year, this is a very good start.
I think it’s probably the most focused since the downward spiral. I’ll probably always prefer TDS over YZ anyday, and probably the same with the fragile. But YZ is a pretty solid album, imo, and ranks high.
i’ll agree that the marketing for this album seems pretty brilliant on his part but i can’t get over how much i dislike this album. i didn’t mind with teeth and i thought the fragile should have been a great single cd, but i can’t get into 1 song on this album. i almost liked the great destroyer until he busts into some queen nonsense that made me laugh more than the ending of “all the love in the world”. i miss the old nothing record days when trent was producing a ton of shit. i’m curious to see if his production style would change like his music has after all these years.
The album blows.
If you like it you are gay.
the colour changing cd is pretty damn funky though.