It is one of the ironies that Trent Reznor, so voluble a supporter of the physical, should release the physical and digital versions of his music so far apart from one another. Whilst ‘Add Violence’ initially appeared back in July, the CD has only finally made its way onto the market and although it has been worth the wait, it has, nonetheless, been frustrating trying to avoid the temptation to listen to the record via a digital format. Anticipation, however, is a huge part of experiencing music. I remember well the hellish wait that attended ‘the fragile’, and yet, whilst it is frustrating to wait, there is a sweetness when the physical format finally reaches you. Digital may be instant, but without the work, it also loses all sense of satisfaction that comes with unwrapping a long-anticipated release, searching for hidden meaning amidst the art and liner notes and then (and only then), putting the disc into the player and hitting play at long last.
A five-track, twenty-seven-minute EP, ‘Add Violence’ is Halo 31 (with the ‘Deviations 1’ LP separating it and its forebear, the ‘not the actual events’), and it contains all the hallmarks of a Halo release – card, digi-pack packaging and an extensive booklet with artwork, lyrics and detailed liner notes all intact. It marks the second part of an EP trilogy (begun with ‘Not the actual events’) and it sees a darker, heavier sound emerging than on that record. It begins in a strangely incongruous place, however. ‘Less than’ adopts the sort of old school synth that has more in common with the Depeche Mode that inspired a young Reznor, only for layers of atmospheric instrumentation to flood across the track, drawing it into a place that has more in common with ‘the fragile’ (albeit the second disc) than anything we’ve heard from Trent since that record. Fuelled by existential rage, it’s classic Nine Inch Nails and yet it still sees Trent adding new strings to his bow. Better is ‘the lovers’, a two-part piece of music (despite being a mere shade over four minutes in length), that pits Trent’s sinister, half-whispered lyrics against a soundtrack that has more in common with the work Trent and Atticus did for ‘The Social Network’ than traditional Nine Inch Nails. Riven with a dark sense of anxiety, it is an interesting, subtle piece of music whilst the downbeat trip hop of ‘this isn’t the place’ has so few lyrics, that you blink and miss them as they drift past. The EP’s darkest, most repressive moment is the distorted, dystopian nightmare of ‘Not anymore’, a piece of music so mired in grungy noise that it threatens to overwhelm the senses at high volumes. Violent, but not in any traditional rock sense, it succeeds in disturbing as it slowly builds to levels of frightening intensity. At nearly twelve minutes in length, ‘the background world’ is one of the longest pieces that Nine Inch Nails have conjured from the ether and it is further evidence that we’re dealing with the soundscapes of ‘the fragile’ rather than the titanic, metallic machinations of ‘with teeth’ or ‘the slip’. Initially built around a solid beat, it recalls the grandeur of lost songs such as ‘non-entity’ before degenerating into a heavily blurred mess that skips and skitters, just outside the boundaries of acceptability for a major label artist. It is a brave, unexpectedly abstruse piece of music that tests (and eventually rewards) the patience.
The second part in a gloriously oblique trilogy, ‘add violence’ has a title that superficially implies a return to the muscular industrial rock of ‘Broken’ or ‘the downward spiral’ but which, on closer inspection, seems to actually imply that the listener bring their own sense of violence to these introspective and evocative pieces of music, the EP drawing the listener away from the every-day world and then forcing them to bring their own interpretation to the music. It is a brave work and one designed, I suspect, to further distance Nine Inch Nails from the type of audience member inclined to scream mindlessly along to songs that, whilst built around a traditional rock framework, bared the psyche of their creator to a quite uncomfortable degree. Not an easy piece of work, then, easy is not something to which Nine Inch Nails fans are typically inclined. Roll on EP 3. 8
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