Every Proper Nine Inch Nails Record Ranked

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, an album that is quite artsy and heady in the grand scheme of shock-rock history.

So to celebrate, without driving myself insane roping in countless remix collections, live albums or Trent Reznor’s increasingly bottomless well of film scores (of which, The Social Network would almost certainly make the top five here), I refamiliarized myself with every NIN record.

I did include his instrumental Ghosts collections and a handful of EPs that could easily pass for albums and vice versa, and have presented the findings, from least distinguished, to greatest. Having aged out of Reznor’s target demo, I expected there to be more actually bad music here than there was. At worst, he tends to repeat himself or go on too long. Relive your awkward youth and rejoice.

 

 

14. The Slip (2008)

A zippy, crunchy, high-energy album that no one had anything but goodwill for when he dropped it gratis in the wake of In Rainbows. And I’m just as surprised as you are that it sounds completely edgeless and bland today, with no discernable themes, hooks, or emotions. Yet it always sounds like it’s just on the cusp of one! Listenably forgettable like one of those latter-day Foo Fighters albums but at least no one can accuse it of being a cash-grab. You’re more likely to remember a stray detail like the gradients of fuzz driving “Echoplex” and “Head Down” than the songs themselves.

 

 

13. Ghosts VI: Locusts (2020)

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross excel at creepy music, often exemplified by desolate, dissonant piano plinks. Here be 83 minutes of it, and if it often sounds like a recycled movie soundtrack, it was; after the studio junked their entire score for The Woman in the Window, it’s largely salvaged for Locusts, whose tracks double and triple the length of those on 2008’s initial, superior Ghosts compilation. Portions are interesting enough — replace any Downward Spiral interstitial with the wriggling-maggot gamelan of “When It Happens (Don’t Mind Me)” and it improves — but how much of this stuff you need outside of an actual horror flick or proper NIN release is up to you. It’s there for the taking and not much more. Trimming 13 minutes of the aptly named “Turn This Off Please” would be a start.

 

 

12. Not the Actual Events (2016)

The shortest and least interesting of NIN’s three 20-to-30-minute releases of the Trump presidency at least begins with a bang: the headlong “Branches/Bones” and bloopy, stuttering “Dear World,” would be a welcome inclusion in any setlist that I’m hoping makes enough room for all the first-decade stuff I want to hear. But the dull march of the other three tracks reminds me why I didn’t recall a one of these records’ relatively negligible songs until this 2024 refresher. Bad Witch and Add Violence at least make a few strong cases that I should’ve remembered the sonics. 

 

 

11. Ghosts V: Together (2020)

Who would’ve thought the leading pessimist of his generation would pull together and attempt to soothe his audience with the pandemic’s own Music for Airports? But where Eno’s cult classic is somewhat chilly and distant, Together is Reznor’s warmest-ever work. While I’m partial to the ear-massaging bleeps on “Your Touch” followed by the muted, Ágætis Byrjun-style glockenspiel of “Hope We Can Again,” your mileage may vary. But no matter how impressive that the intensifying “Still Right Here” bridges the descent into hell on VI: Locusts, Music for Airports was a half-hour shorter.

 

 

10. Bad Witch (2018)

Maybe the freeform Sun Ra brass drone “Play the Goddamn Part” is how Trent Reznor ended up composing the score for Pixar’s Soul with Jon Batiste and earning him an Oscar. I’m also partial to the caffeinated breakbeats of “Ahead of Ourselves” and the centerpiece “God Break Down the Door,” a crooning vocal departure over otherwise familiar music intended as an impression of David Bowie circa, well, Trent Reznor. In fact, I prefer it. And it turns out he played the sax himself. Unfortunately, his Bowie impersonation doesn’t hold up as well for eight minutes of “Over and Out” without the hyperactive bluster, and the top-notch sonics of Bad Witch only somewhat obscure its boredom towards substantive songs.

 

 

9. With Teeth (2005)

The most stripped-down Nine Inch Nails album, a wise experiment after The Fragile was his own double-length meditation on The Wall. If you’re gonna try and sound like a band in a room, with live, unprogrammed drums, you might as well hire Dave Grohl. It’s not surprising that the grinning title “The Hand That Feeds” is attached to Reznor’s least-threatening radio single ever, and that it’s attached to a disco detour along with the album’s other minor hit “Only,” which boasts one of With Teeth’s only prominent uses of a synth. What is surprising: all the moments where Reznor breaks out the piano, and I don’t mean for ballads. The highlights are “Getting Smaller” and “All the Love in the World,” which both examine a superstar’s return to the margins as his imperial phase fades. But the title is wishful thinking; wish Reznor committed to a rawer sound in the absence of complicated sonics, or more memorable songs. Grohl’s dry, muted drum tone suggests PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? without any of the atmosphere or longing.

 

 

8. Ghosts I-IV (2008)

Crucially, Trent Reznor’s first all-instrumental release plays less like a film score — because he was a couple years away from diving fully into that business — than a beat tape. So nearly two hours of incidentals never sits in one place or toys with one instrument too long (though I’d love to take his piano away). Three tracks exceed five minutes, most tap out before three, and they could be more challenging rhythmically. Bits I’d love to hear again soon: the MacGyvered slide guitar-sounding contraption on “14 Ghosts II,” the industrial jazz of “19 Ghosts III,” the nearly songful blown-out “Sky Saw” boomph of “20 Ghosts III,” or “34 Ghosts IV,” the backbone of the biggest hit Reznor will ever be part of, which you know better as “Old Town Road.” The original gets much, much spookier.

 

 

7. Year Zero (2007)

Moody, straightforward, scapey, scrapey, the real NIN concept album (The Fragile’s was excess) is an elusive thing. It was both anti-Bush (“Capital G”) and also a dystopian X-Files virtual reality game that dovetailed in a skeptically hopeful refrain (“I am trying to believe”) that might resonate with young lefties in 2024. I wish it had more extreme moments, or at least some crunch or funk like the Grohl-powered With Teeth, but it’s better as a whole. The noises (check out the sine-wave generator test “Me, I’m Not” and the feedbacking chorus of “My Violent Heart”) and tunes (that a vibraphone on “Vessel?”) are some of Reznor’s most enduring even if you can’t quite pin down why. Greater than the sum of its parts you bet, especially the corny “Meet Your Master.”

 

 

6. Add Violence (2017)

“Less Than” is Reznor’s most towering anthem in years, the pointillist blip-trickles of “The Lovers” his coolest trick in same. “This Isn’t the Place” reimagines Radiohead’s contemporaneous A Moon Shaped Pool as a digital dystopia, with brain-massaging synth bass. “Not Anymore” an inspired deconstruction of his blown-out tantrums. And somehow eight of the 12 minutes of “The Background World” being devoted to a deliberately mislooped instrumental section distorting and disintegrating further down the spiral — his very own Basinski tribute — is Reznor’s most arresting experiment ever.

 

 

5. Hesitation Marks (2013)

Intersections with Lil Nas X, Halsey and Pixar notwithstanding, Hesitation Marks was the last official NIN release orbiting pop music in any way — Lindsey Buckingham on hand and all — and possibly ever. In fact, it may be Trent’s poppiest, period; meet his falsetto on “Various Methods of Escape.”  “Satellite” has definitely listened to Annie’s “Chewing Gum,” and the freaky-funky “All Time Low” riff was my favorite Reznor hook since “The Perfect Drug.” “Everything,” which felt so different for having major-key verses at the time, will now stand out having a much uglier chorus than you remember. The 808s and lo-fi beats on “Running” and “Copy of a” stand out in a good way for once, rather than in a diminished-blockbuster-budget way. And come again? Is “I Would for You” a love song? (Albeit one with low self-esteem.)

 

 

4. The Fragile (1999)

As with Physical Graffiti, you can bump the first disc all the way up to the top two as far as I’m concerned. Sonically, Reznor’s never made more dynamic, brain-swallowing vortexes than “We’re in This Together” or the opening, stair-climbing riff of “Somewhat Damaged” seguing into the unsettled disquiet of “The Day the World Went Away.” The textural bliss of the Dr. Dre-overseen “Even Deeper” or the recurring motif “La Mer” or the prog freakout “Just Like You Imagined” all fulfill the parts of the NIN sound that he’s attempted in countless dry runs without as much to show for it. It’s very possibly his most satisfying experience as a start-to-finish disc. But that’s just half The Fragile, and aside from a couple extremely catchy, all-time NIN singles (“Into the Void” and the widely disliked but extremely fun and frantic “Starfuckers, Inc.”), the second disc (i.e. “The Big Come Down”) suffocates in forgettable bloat — you can knock it down to number nine or so on this list. Upped a notch for dazzling sonics, impressive ambition the ability to simply treat Disc 2 as bonus b-sides, however you want to slice it. Somewhat damaged, indeed.

 

 

3. The Downward Spiral (1994)

Like many addicts in thrall, Trent Reznor at the peak of his powers didn’t know when to quit. So plenty of his greatest work is overlong, and decked with soundtracky instrumentals he didn’t outsource to soundtracks at the time because he wasn’t yet responsible enough for steady jobs. So The Downward Spiral, one of the most breathtaking productions in alternative-rock history, is a bit full of itself in the second half and you can feel the imbalance between titanic singles-of-the-decade like “Closer” or “Hurt” and an attention-deflator like the title dirge. The best songs are his best, the rest merely good. An iconic, era-defining totem just deserves shreweder editing for its stature.

 

 

 

2. Broken (1992)

The fulfillment of what Nine Inch Nails was supposed to be, as far as I’m concerned. It’s Reznor’s angriest record, thanks to his ex-communicated label TVT, and his dumb youth, and punishing meltdowns like “Happiness in Slavery,” scrambled in high-tech production unheard-of for heavy music in 1992. But unlike some other great EPs, it feels a few tracks short of a complete statement; imagine if “Closer” or “March of the Pigs” kept this company and you’d have a truer classic than their actual greatest album, but as Reznor’s always told us, he’s far from whole. So Broken it is.

 

 

1. Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

Many more people than me are bigger believers in the purity of debut albums capturing a fully-formed talent in their youth, so I’ll get a resounding “duh” if I talk about that here. But how many artists knock it out of the park on their first try because of their production? Even Prince, who’s sampled prominently on Pretty Hate Machine, couldn’t manage that with For You. Reznor’s funkiest record by miles, he succeeded in melding hip-hop (“Down in It”) with Depeche Mode (“Sin”) and more ballads than you remember (“Something I Can Never Have,” “Sanctified,” “That’s What I Get”) and managed to trick the asymmetrical-haired youth of 1989 into thinking this was the future of metal. Really, you can count on one hand how many times a guitar shows up on Nine Inch Nails’ debut album, and most of them are on the first two cuts, which admittedly, being “Head Like a Hole” and “Terrible Lie,” are pretty dominating. But it’s remarkable how “heavy” this synthpop masterpiece ended up being discussed as, from vibes, attitude, Reznor’s born-pissed clarion spew of a voice, art direction, T-shirts, hype, whatever. Sure, it almost beat Nirvana to the top of the ‘90s’ hallowed angry-white-male mountain. But more importantly, you can dance to it; the final moments even have turntable scratching.