Nine Inch Nails - Quake

Around 2000 or 2001 I bought a Sega Saturn. By this point, it was already considered a failed console, a slight oddity of the generation between the classic cartridge eras and the huge success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. A friend who I'd spent a lot of time playing Goldeneye with had discovered drugs and was already selling off all his possessions to buy weed; he asked if I wanted to buy his Sega Saturn and six games for a fairly measly sum - I can't remember how much, but I want to say £30. I wasn't a huge gamer, but enjoyed my N64 enough to think I should try another console. In amongst the games included were Quake, Alien Trilogy, a futuristic racing game that I didn't enjoy as much as F-Zero X, and Loaded, the game that introduced me to Pop Will Eat Itself (who themselves eventually crossed paths with NIN near the end of their career, and at the start of Clint Mansell's incredible film-scoring era. I wonder if he and Trent ever chatted about the Quake soundtrack).

Anyway, I found almost all of the games on the Sega Saturn incredibly hard to play, and Quake was particularly disappointing since the graphics were so basic compared to what I'd grown up used to on Goldeneye (which I'm sure looks beyond shit to anyone playing games now). I'd heard so much about what a landmark game Quake was that I had very high expectations, but couldn't progress in it very far because I was so bad at it, something I attributed to the crappy graphics, but was much more likely related to my skill level. However, I knew that Trent Reznor had done the soundtrack, and I remember hearing these haunted, sparse but sufficiently industrial soundscapes and thinking they were cool. The great thing about Sega Saturn games was that you could put the cd in your cd player, skip the game data on track 1 and play the rest of the soundtrack as an audio cd - that was how I heard Pop Will Eat Itself, and where I first heard all these songs (I honestly was so bad at the game I probably heard at most three of them whilst actually playing the game).

Fast forward 20 years, and I was stood in my kitchen having just got my children to bed when I saw on Twitter (or possibly an email) that NIN were putting out the Quake soundtrack on vinyl as well as reissuing With Teeth (one of my favourite NIN albums), and The Social Network soundtrack (which I didn't buy - I think collecting all the soundtracks that Trent Reznor has done is a rabbit-hole too far). I immediately ordered Quake and With Teeth and they turned up amazingly soon afterwards. They'd done such a great job with the previous reissues, with such attention to detail and care that I was keen for more.

The Quake soundtrack is no exception to this rule. The ten songs are spread across three sides of vinyl and the fourth is etched with some lines of what I think are C++ relating to the songs in the game code (there's a line that looks like a comment starting with // which I think is C++, although I've never dared to try to use that language myself). It's basically impossible to photograph, so you'll just have to believe me on that. There was due to be a nice booklet containing details of the recording like in their other reissues, but I think a legal dispute meant it couldn't be published, although Trent leaked it on the internet as he is known to do. The Quake logo on the sleeve is embossed, although my favourite detail might be the images of the blocky off-white CRT monitor on the inner sleeves. It's funny how something once so prevalent now looks so dated.

It's probably fair to say that about 20 years passed between me hearing the songs on my Sega Saturn cd and getting this vinyl. I would have played them a few times back in the day, but nowhere near as much as I played The Downward Spiral or Broken or The Fragile. I went off to university and the Sega Saturn spent a good few years sat in a cupboard at my parents' house. Eventually I told my brother he could have it, but I have no idea how much he played it. He is a much better gamer than me, so I like to think he heard more of the soundtrack in its natural habitat than I ever did, but I don't know for sure. When the vinyl got released, I asked him to dig out the cd so I could make a copy of the mp3s, something that had never crossed my mind in the years in between. I still don't listen to these songs often, but when I'm in the mood for instrumental Trent Reznor songs, they often fill the void nicely (it's a very heavily populated genre of music, and the pandemic-released Ghosts albums have become my go-to listens).

Often here very little happens, but the mood is set perfectly. I find it hard to think that people could genuinely have found the gameplay scary, since the graphics were what they were, but I guess expectations were lower. However, this music is thoroughly haunting in isolation, so perhaps it was exactly what the game needed. It's funny to think of 1996-era Nine Inch Nails creating this soundtrack having no idea that Trent would go on to become one of Hollywood's biggest film-score composers. It's nice to hear the beginning of that arc, and how established the style already was.

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, gatefold
Tracks: 10
Cost: £44
Bought: Nine Inch Nails website
When: 19/09/2020
Colour: Black
Etching: lines of code on side D
mp3s: None

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

I don't have many particularly strong memories of Hesitation Marks. So much so, I remember getting this LP recently and looking quite hard at the tracklisting before really recognising any of the songs at all; for a short moment I wondered if I'd not even heard the album before. For some reason, I kinda lost my way with Nine Inch Nails after Year Zero - that was 2007 and my last year of university. I loved that album and everything that went along with it (and I loved With Teeth, which came out in my second year of university even moreso). That summer I saw NIN play an incredible set at Sziget Festival in Hungary (we happened to be in Budapest when the festival was on, but that was partly because I'd suggested dates that meant I'd be able to see NIN there). But the end of 2007 marked the move to Cardiff and the immersion in the punk scene. Nine Inch Nails weren't punk.

I downloaded The Slip when it came out (as we were encouraged to do), but somehow still haven't bought a real copy of that album (which I do occasionally feel guilty about). It was fine, but it didn't do much for me. Maybe the fact I never had a real copy to prompt me to play it meant it never got the time it deserved. There's still a scratched cdr copy of it in my car, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't play. Then, five years later, Hesitation Marks came out and for whatever reason I waited a whole year to buy a copy (and probably only did so because the cd was a fiver in Fopp). In the time in between Year Zero and then, I'd started and finished my PhD and moved to Oxford. A couple of years later I'd rediscover the band and my enjoyment of them, and I got back into them properly; I even found myself quite enjoying the trilogy of EPs they put out. But Hesitation Marks remained this strange album in a 10 year gap of not caring about the band.

Looking at what else I bought that day, I can remember clearly bouncing around the central London record shops spending a good whack of money, but don't remember adding this one to my pile of cds and records (and one tape - Shellac's At Action Park). I spent £65 on music that day, and another £43 the next day in Banquet (having been to see the excellent La Dispute show that Banquet had put on in the All Saints Church, later immortalised on the Tiny Dots LP/dvd). I suspect Hesitation Marks suffered from not standing out sufficiently against the large amount of competition (and wasn't flat out terrible, like the Soulsavers album with the guy who isn't Mark Lanegan - I tried to listen to that again recently and still found it terrible).

So when Nine Inch Nails put the Quake soundtrack on vinyl up on their webstore, I ordered this one along with the reissue of With Teeth - they'd reissued enough of their albums to make having a complete collection of NIN LPs a realistic goal, so I figured this would be in fine company. On listening to it, the songs kinda came back, but with no strong connections. Copy of A and Come Back Haunted must have been singles, or at least songs that had some life outside of the album, because I recognised them, but that's about it. If you'd told me that there were NIN songs called Various Methods of Escape or I Would For You I'd have said "huh?" and "no, that's Jane's Addiction", respectively. The former has a great hook in the chorus, but plods through the verses; the latter has a huge, soaring chorus and probably would have been a hit had it not been left as song eleven on a 14-song album. All Time Low is a straight-up banger and Trent Reznor doing perfect pop, so I'd like to think I'd have remembered that one too. The saxophone on While I'm Still Here is amazing but totally wasted as a curio on the penultimate song.

If I'm being critical (or, perhaps, just reviewing things like a reviewer might), I'd say that Hesitation Marks is too long, lacks focus, is neither a guitar album or a synth album, and has too few memorable moments. I don't think those are very negative things to say, because they're all very true statements. Maybe they're all fair in isolation but sound damning when strung together like that. There's a strong eight or nine song album, but really I'm just including some fodder to make it an album - there's a great EP for sure.

As part of my NIN collection, I'm glad to have this one, and it's good that I've finally given it some attention, but even shelling out £35 wasn't enough to make me actually get much from it. 

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, insert, gatefold

Tracks: 14

Cost: £34.80

Bought: Nine Inch Nails website

When: 19/09/2020

Colour: Black

Etching: None

mp3s: cd included

Nine Inch Nails - Broken

In a lot of ways, Broken represents exactly what I want (and wanted) from Nine Inch Nails. Despite that, I don't think any fan could say it was the band's "best" release – on paper, it's only six songs, and two of those don't really count, although the bonus tracks put it back up to six songs – but more importantly, how could it ever be fairly compared to the two giant albums that followed it? In any discography that contains The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, the odds are really stacked against every other recording.

But Broken is, for me, what Nine Inch Nails were always about – punishingly heavy industrial metal but with Trent Reznor's unique ability to somehow mix that with pop and give it a groove that you'd never normally hear alongside guitars. Happiness in Slavery is a perfect example of this, although also one of the sloppier combinations – the verses are brutal and the instrument break is pure noise, but the chorus could be a pop song in the way it's sung (if not in lyrical content). The back story to Broken was that Trent's anger at the label's handling of Pretty Hate Machine caused him to write these blistering songs, and if that's the case I'm kinda glad it all played out as it did; I like the songs on Pretty Hate Machine, but to me that album is the odd-one-out in the NIN back-catalogue – there are hints of industrial, but really there's a lot more 80’s goth and synth-rock going on. Who knows how Nine Inch Nails would sound now if they'd followed that trajectory! (The fact that this EP contains a secret Adam Ant cover is probably a clue.)

Of course, the order in which I got heard the NIN albums is probably why I'm not a PHM fan, and why I think Broken is such perfect NIN material – I got the albums in this order: Downward Spiral, The Fragile, Broken, All That Could Have Been and then Pretty Hate Machine – I'd heard epic-NIN, industrial-NIN and the industrial live versions of PHM songs on the live album before I'd heard that record; I love hearing those pop-moments soundtracked to savage guitar work and drums that are being beaten more than they’re being played (and a lot more than to a drum machine). Despite that, I never really got into industrial as a genre – I think the pop was part of the enjoyment, as much as it surprises me to say it. I know lots of people wouldn’t call NIN an industrial band, and that's fine, but to me they are and they're at their best when they commit fully to their version of it.

And that's exactly what they did on Broken. All four of the actual songs are brilliant (Gave Up and Wish particularly) and every time they're played live they go down amazingly well. It's impressive how many of their best songs came from a bitterly recorded EP. When With Teeth came out I remember describing it to a friend as being the closest thing they've done to a full length version of Broken, a comment based around the fact it was heavy but didn't have a narrative or concept - I'm not sure I agree with 20-year-old-me entirely, but I still love the relative simplicity of that album.

I first heard Broken in December 2001, just over a year after getting The Downward Spiral and a few months after getting The Fragile. I'd been to a record fair but found disappointingly few records I wanted, so picked Broken up in MVC for £6. They would have had that cd in stock every single time I'd ever been in there, but I guess I decided that was the day to finally get it. I was already a fan of the band, but those songs hit hard and made me a bigger fan. A few months later I rushed out to get the And All That Could Have Been double cd for an at-the-time expensive £17. When the band started reissuing their albums I figured it'd be nice to pick them, and gradually did so. After I'd seen the care and attention that'd gone into The Downward Spiral and The Fragile reissues (bought with my World Cup sweepstake winnings), I picked up Broken the very next time I went into the record shop. The package is lovely, in particular the scratched-out lyrics etched into the b-side, the 7" and the booklet. It' worth the money for the songs alone, but the details makes it even more enjoyable.

Format: One sided 12", 7", booklet

Tracks: 8

Cost: £22 new

Bought: Truck Store, Oxford

When: 31/08/18

Colour: Black

Etching: Lyrics etched into b-side

mp3s: Download code

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Nearly exactly 18 years ago, I came home from a record shopping trip to Bournemouth with a second-hand copy of The Downward Spiral on cd, which I was very pleased to have bought for £6. I'd not heard any Nine Inch Nails at this point, but knew I wanted to get into them - everything I'd read in Kerrang! and heard about them made me think they were a band I wanted to be a fan of. On listening to it, I remember thinking at the time that I was glad I hadn't got into them sooner, when I was younger and wouldn't have got it; a very precocious thought for a 16-year-old to have, but not an entirely surprising one, all considering.

My thinking was that the younger-me would have been put off by the instruments that weren't guitars and drums, and would have considered it too far from rock music, the very broad genre I had decided was for me; there are records in my collection today that 14- and 15-year-old-me would be very shocked to see indeed.

As it was, I decided I was "old enough" to appreciate the things Trent Reznor was doing musically and decided it was fine to branch out from traditional instruments to the industrial noise this album contained. In hindsight, I suspect part of it was that I'd spent money on it - had I been leant a copy there's a very good chance I'd have dismissed it as "not rock" and spent years ignoring the band, a mistake I'm glad I didn't make. I think part of me really wanted to like it despite everything else because everything I'd heard about the band had made me really want to be a fan. Whatever it was, I got into it and it became a huge album for me. 18 years later, I still think it's a landmark album and enjoy that it's been part of my life for more than half of it.

I can still remember the feeling of pressing play that first time, not really knowing what to expect and hearing that solitary strike at the start of Mr Self Destruct. Then hearing it again and again increasingly quickly before the song properly starts - what a way to start an album - so sparse and bold. There are a lot of albums that start off strong, but none in such a unique way. The song is brilliantly abrasive and it was around that point that I decided I was going to be a fan and that I was glad I'd not dismissed them at an earlier age. I also remember loving the way the drums in Piggy drift away from the song such that they're almost playing independently from the other instruments, only to have the keys float in creating a calm over the maniacal drumming. Throughout the album the drumming is huge and forms a large part of the sound - for a long time, that drum sound was what I associated with industrial music, and the bands I liked the most were the ones that made the most of drums.

Of course, being a self-obsessed teen, I read far too much into the lyrics, despite really not understanding the intended concept very well at all. I'd like to pretend that I didn't try to read so much into them, but if I said I didn't that would be a lie; a teenager with a lyric booklet is a very dangerous thing indeed. This vinyl reissue comes with a 12" booklet giving details about the recording and production process, which was a fascinating read and an unexpected highlight of buying the record. It talks about what Trent considered the theme to be, which I got bits of but hadn't tied together quite so nicely in my mind.

The Downward Spiral was the 16th album I'd bought and furthered the idea in my mind that an album should be more than just a collection of songs, but a work intended to be heard as a whole with a beginning, a middle and an end. Of course there are albums I love that don't adhere to that, but I've certainly got a soft-spot for those that do. And what an end this album has - after 13 songs of difficult and abrasive industrial music (albeit played with Trent's astute understanding of pop, and how to apply it to the most unlikely music), the album closes with Hurt. Can you imagine what it was like for a 16-year-old to hear that, not knowing that he had such song-writing in him, let alone that finishing an album like this in that way was even allowed? Needless to say, it quickly became a favourite and one that I knew all the lyrics to by heart. In hindsight, it's laughable that I thought that I was in anyway unique in doing that - the album had sold countless copies for years and 16-year-olds everywhere around the world were doing the exact same thing. Again, the drums are brilliant.

Despite all my embarrassing associations with this album, I still fucking love it. It hits hard and hasn't aged (as far as I'm concerned), which isn't something I can say of a lot of the other music I was listening to back then. Sometimes I go years without playing it, other times I listen to it often. I look forward to enjoying it for many years to come.

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, 12" booklet
Tracks: 14
Cost: £23 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 16/07/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Nine Inch Nails - Survivalism

Similarly to the The Hand That Feeds boxset, I got a box (#672/2000?) to store the 9" singles that the band released from their With Teeth follow-up, Year Zero. I had high hopes for Year Zero, having enjoyed With Teeth quite so much, but it was less my thing - it was a concept album and heavily relied on electronic sounds, so it was really everything that I was glad With Teeth wasn't. It had some highlights, but overall wasn't as strong.

However, I did love the alternative reality story that sat alongside the album - the effort that went into that was crazy. I won't go into all the details - I’m sure they're well documented across the internet, but there were messages hidden on t-shirts, billboards, hidden USB drives containing songs and clues and endless websites of back-story; it was genuinely very cool - I bored some friends a few times with my excited stories re-telling what I'd read online (sorry).

The single doesn't do a whole lot for me - it’s a fine NIN song, but nothing to write home about. The b-side is unexpectedly interesting though (given that most NIN remixes aren't great): Saul Williams and Thavius Beck remix Survivalism but, crucially, add a lot. In particular, Saul sings the choruses, which is great. In a lot of ways, it feels closer to a Saul Williams cover of NIN than it does a NIN remix, which is cool. This was all happening around the same time as Trent Reznor producing Saul's Niggy Tardust album, so I guess they were spending a lot of time together. Nine Inch Nails were the reason I got into Saul Williams in the first place, since they had him support them at their Brixton Academy shows just before I went to Australia.

Format: 9", numbered, boxset 

Tracks: 2

Cost: £3 new

Bought: Virgin Megastore, Cardiff

When: 14/04/07

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds

In 2005, Nine Inch Nails came back from their lull/disappearance/hiatus with the album With Teeth, one that I'm very fond of. As a precursor to that, they released The Hand That Feeds as a single.

In another case of me not remembering the exact order of events, I think I read something on their website about a free gift for fans, so I signed up and received in the post the numbered 9" box that this record lives in (#1668/2000). I think that made me go out and buy the single, which my local HMV had an offer on - if you bought all three UK versions together you got a small discount. It was enough to tempt me, so I got all three (which basically had the same song and two remixes spread across them. I also ended up with a promo single that Hugh had got from his university radio station, containing just the a-side and being one of the most redundant cds in my collection). I never got round to buying the other 9" single(s) from With Teeth to flesh out the boxset, so this record lives in there alone, along with the letter that came with it (photographed below). It'd taken a minor beating in the post, but is in reasonable condition.

The single is great. Like I said, I have a lot of time for With Teeth and love that it’s just a very regular, heavy Nine Inch Nails album. Sometimes, when a band routinely has such grand ideas, it's nice when they do something simple. At the time, I compared it to Broken in that sense - just very good, heavy songs. The dub remix on the b-side is largely nothing of interest - longer but in no way better.

Format: 9", numbered boxset

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1.80 new

Bought: HMV, Lancaster

When: 18/04/05

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Nine Inch Nails - March of the Pigs

About an hour after buying this record I finally got the fact that it was a 9" record; somehow it'd taken an hour to realise that, of course, the band were named after nails 9 inches long - I'd never really thought about the words other than in the context of being a cool band name. Anyway, I was pretty pleased when I realised - I'd bought it mostly because I thought it was cool that it was a different size, but it was even better when I realised the significance. I'm not usually so slow on the uptake.

I’d spent 2000 and 2001 getting all the Nine Inch Nails albums, having been thoroughly impressed (and beaten and bruised) by The Downward Spiral. In 2002 I found this record in a second hand shop in Boscombe and quickly added it to the pile of second hand cds I was buying. At £5, I remember thinking it was expensive, and that all the cds I bought that day were a similar price, but for full albums.

The single itself is a highlight from The Downward Spiral - those piano interludes make the song - they're so unexpected (on first listen) and seem so out of place, but I love it for them. The remix adds something - certainly in that it's more than twice as long, but lacks the energy and juxtaposition of that energy against the piano, so is definitely a lesser version. A Violent Fluid is little more than a bit of filler, but the remix of Reptile (entitled Underneath the Skin) is quite interesting - it starts off quite underwhelmingly, but actually builds to something I quite enjoy, which is a rare thing to be said about a remix.

Format: 9", numbered (#411)

Tracks: 4

Cost: £5 second hand

Bought: Boscombe

When: 29/10/02

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Nine Inch Nails - Things Falling Apart

Nine Inch Nails announced lots of very exciting things last night (a new song, album details and tour dates - sadly the only UK ones are at Reading and Leeds, and I really don't fancy that). Anyway, I thought I'd write about another of their albums, and the only other LP of theirs I have at the moment is Things Falling Apart - the remix album of songs from The Fragile. I'd certainly like to one day have all the Nine Inch Nails albums on vinyl, but that may have to wait until I've got a little more disposable cash.

Things Falling Apart has nearly universally terrible reviews on the internet (0.4/10 must be one of the lowest scores Pitchfork has ever given, not that paying attention to Pitchfork scores or reviews is something anyone should do), but I wasn't aware of that for the first 12 years I owned this album, and only know now because I opened the Wikipedia page on it. I never thought of it as a terrible album. I mean, it's a remix album, what the hell were these people thinking? I don't think anyone bought this record thinking it was going to be ground-breaking. I certainly didn't, and I was only 16 at the time. I only owned The Downward Spiral and £9 seemed like a good price to hear some more Nine Inch Nails (I hadn't even heard The Fragile then, and it was strange finally hearing the originals after being so used to the remixes). There's some truth in the fact that no one needs three versions of Starfuckers Inc. on an LP, and some of the remixes aren't that exciting, but I didn't mind then and I don't really now.

I suppose part of the reason I'm so indifferent to this albums perceived awfulness and strangely sentimental about a largely forgettable NIN remix album is that this LP is the first LP I ever bought. I had a few 7"s at the time (the first of which was this Manic Street Preachers record) and a whole bunch of cds (75, to be exact) but no other LPs. Sadly, my first five LPs were mostly very embarrassing indeed (more on that in the future, unfortunately) but did include White Pony by the Deftones, and it's nice to think that 16-year-old-me had some taste! I almost certainly played this record loads on my parents hi-fi, and even more when I got my first turntable for my birthday that year (it was one of those little compact ones where 12" records would hang over the edge. I even took it with me to Australia, but sold it before I came home; I'd clearly acquired a lot of stuff in that year). I vaguely remember enjoying the song 10 Miles High as a teenager and it's still one of the better songs now. Maybe that's because it's a b-side rather than a remix.

Of course, if I do end up buying the NIN back-catalogue on vinyl, I'll be quite glad I bought this 12 years ago, because somehow I doubt 28-year-old-me will be so pleased about spending his money on this, and even less tolerant of the music on it.

Format: double 12"

Tracks: 10

Cost: £9 new

Bought: Tower Records, Southampton

When: 06/04/01

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine

The other week Trent Reznor announced that he was bringing Nine Inch Nails back to life and I for one was very pleased. I've been a fan of NIN for nearly half my life now and I was pretty saddened when he called it quits a few years back. I'd had the good luck to see NIN nails a few times in the years in between and I loved seeing them play live. I went to Southside Festival in Germany in 2009 almost solely because NIN and Faith No More were playing - it was to be the last-ever NIN tour and was also the first of the FNM reunion shows and I wasn't going to miss either (as it happened they both played Leeds Festival that year too, but my friends and I were working on the bar and I was worried our shifts might clash with the bands we wanted to see. As it was, I missed the Pumpkins and NIN but caught FNM. Some solid 1990's headliners there). I danced like a madman to NIN at Southside because ultimately that's the thing I love most about the Nine Inch Nails - they're such good songs to dance to. I know it might sound like an odd statement, but Trent Reznor knows how to write a pop song, and that combined with guitars and industrial noise turns out to be a winning combination.

I bought a second hand copy of The Downward Spiral when I was 15 despite having never actually heard Nine Inch Nails. I'd read endless things about them (they were all over Kerrang! back then because The Fragile had not long been released). It was different to almost all the other music I was listening to because of the electrical edge to it. At that age a keyboard was seen as a sign of weakness in a band (although for a brief period a DJ in the ranks became very cool!). However, I loved the album and 13 years later I still do. I gradually picked up the other albums but Pretty Hate Machine stayed out of my collection for a short while and was the last NIN album I picked up of the ones out at that time. Kerrang! had called it "largely electronic" which I think put me off for a while; I thought perhaps I wouldn't enjoy it at that age, and maybe I was right. Certainly not finding a cheap copy probably put me off for a bit. Three years later I bought this copy in a long-closed but not-forgotten record shop in Southampton called FM Music (along with RATM's People of the Sun EP and Siamese Dream on double orange vinyl. I was clearly feeling wealthy that day - I'd been eyeing up all three of those records for ages).

By the time I heard Pretty Hate Machine I already knew other versions of half of the songs from the live album And All That Could Have Been and the absolutely incredible version of Something I Can Never Have on the accompanying Still cd (if you haven't heard it, I can't recommend it enough. That version consists of just Trent and a piano in a room with this beautiful echo). However, I knew the originals were going to be quite different, and I was glad I hadn't bought it much sooner because I'm not at all sure I would've got it. As it was, I enjoyed it, although still not as much as Broken or The Downward Spiral (my favourite NIN record varies regularly, but it's either one of those two or With Teeth). The singles and Terrible Lie are still brilliant songs and pretty much every time I hear them I think about throwing myself around to them at the front of the NIN shows I saw. Head Like a Hole is one of those truly great openers (I've never made a list of top Side One Track One songs like in High Fidelity, but Head Like a Hole is a contender).

Pretty Hate Machine went out of print and for a while finding a copy wasn't an entirely trivial task for a few years. It's since been reissued twice, but at the time I was pretty glad to find this copy. I don't have a huge amount of NIN vinyl but I certainly plan to flesh out my collection at some point. Decent copies of the older albums tend to be a bit pricey, but I'd be pretty happy if the other albums were sat on my shelf next to this one.

Format: 12", insert

Tracks: 10

Cost: £11 new

Bought: FM Music, Southampton

When: 03/05/03

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no