Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine (1989) – LITTLE LOST CLASSICS

I have some vague memories of when Trent Reznor came into the world with the Nine Inch Nails. There, in the beginning of the 90s, when I was starting to discover music for real, one of the stuff I liked the most was heavy AND danceable electronic music; in my head it was more or less as if that whole scene of people like Front 242Split Second and others (mixed to new beat, of course) were the Darth Vader version of Kraftwerk, roaring over beats and synths that made “Boing boom tschak” sound like it came off the 8-key piano he had as a kid. Then came “Head like a hole” opening Pretty hate machine…

Yes, it was basically like EBM and the like, but at the same time it wasn’t. It was mechanical, it had weight, it shook every millimeter of the body, but it was more… human and pop, for lack of a more precise definition. Much due to the man who sang about the god of money.

Reznor’s presence at the head of NiN made all the difference in relation to his industrial predecessors, because beyond the characteristic fury of the genre and its affluents, it was possible to distinguish what he sang and his lyrics were basically about real anguish, from a real person. and tortured by these bad feelings.

Obviously, in addition to the figure of that wonderful man, there was the production of Pretty hate machine. I don’t remember, even today, artists linked to EBM/Industrial who made something like this record before it (nor the Revolting Cocks hahaha), with the exception of a few glimpses in sparse songs like “The kids from the park”.

The marriage between the dark universe and the potential reach beyond the ghettos that NiN already made in its debut (and consolidated in The Downard spiral) made many purists turn up their noses at the record and band, but fuck them of course unveiled a scene that until then was restricted to the initiated for a lot of people eager for the new, and damn, songs like “Down in it”, “Ringfinger” and “Sin” – until today and eternal favorites of the house – were, definitely, the new.

And earlier when I put Pretty hate machine to play it I realized that it was released 34 years ago (!), but unlike so many contemporary similars, it has aged as well as the man who gave birth to it.

Essential!

Or on fucking spotifail