Editorial or Album Review? Pretty Hate Machine

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine (Remastered version)

It came out in 1989. But for me, it held most importance in the years 1992 to 1997. It was Nine Inch Nails debut album Pretty Hate Machine.

It was eleven songs of near perfection that spawned a wave of “n” or “nin” stickers on the back of cars that lasted for a decade. Trent Reznor released other albums that made the band one of the top acts of the 1990s, but it was this debut that shifted the way a generation of musical youth thought about and listened to music.

Sound? Content? Audio-visual? Dark, deviant sexual expression? Reznor took mainstream music by the hands – bound them – and then fucked it in the ass.

Like, love or hate NIN, you can’t argue the impact. Nine In Nails changed everything.

And everything started with Pretty Hate Machine.

I was 16 when I first listened to the album. I was 17 when I bought it. I was in my late teens and early twenties when I lived off the album like nectar. Countless nights in college, I’d listen to the album on headphone or blasting through the speakers of my bookshelf stereo.

I’d read the lyrics. I’d close my eyes. I’d scream the lyrics.

“I am JUSTIFIED! I am PURIFIED! I am SANCTIFIED! Insiiiiide you …”

When you are in that age, albums and artists are more than a recreational drug; they are the musical equivalent of an opiate being injected into your ears. And when my bipolar nature took me past the depressive humdrum of The Smiths or The Cure – when I needed to go lower and darker – NIN became the musical drug of choice. More specifically, Pretty Hate Machine was my fix.

Even as I type this, listening to the album, every song takes me back to a place (or a color as my wife calls it). I close my eyes and listen to the opening chords of “Something I Can Never Have” and I’m back there. Back in 1995. With the song on repeat. For hours.

“… my favorite dreams of you still wash ashore …”

By the turn of the millennium, I had moved on and out of the avalanche of semi-goth, quasi-industrial, unintentional emo-ism. And so the album became something I would pull out once a year rather than once a night as I had done years before. A few years later, it was an afterthought.

When I pulled it out in 2005, to upload a few tracks to my laptop, the lack of balance – lack of low-end bass to be specific – became quite noticeable. It was mixed to 1989 standards which meant the album was basically unplayable in a club setting (not that it was an album full of dance standards). I remember having several conversations with deejay friends – who were all the same age – about how badly the album needed to be remastered because it sounded so dated because it pushed so much high and mid-range sound with no effective way to hit the lower ranges that would vibrate patrons to their inner core.

And then it happened. A month or so ago, a remastered version was released. It had balance. It sounded the same, but better. Yes, it is still time-stamped as a piece of the Industrial movement – like Ministry or Pop Will Eat Itself – but it now has the production quality of the NIN albums that came out later – like The Fragile – but with the quality that Reznor never surpassed after Pretty Hate Machine.

(As a side note, Broken, Fixed and The Downward Spiral all equally good albums, in my opinion.)

If you are under the age of 30, it is doubtful that you have such a passionate reaction to Pretty Hate Machine. Even as I began thinking about writing something on this new version, I became aware that I was crossing a barrier and going into the “old guy writes about an album that he liked and I’ve never listened to” genre.

I get it. It makes sense. I can’t stop time.

But if you are – or were – a fan of this groundbreaking album, then I’d suggest adding it to your collection. If you are a fanatic then getting this album is non-negotiable. It’s required.

Because when you hear “…nothing like the feel of something new …” all of that energy, defiance, passion, frustration, exultation and sadomasochism will come rushing back. Even if only for an hour. Even if it is a fading, fucking reminder of the way things used to be.