“The more we change/ everything stays the same”. So goes the cliché we hear over and over in “Too Late All Gone” from the first full album by Trent Reznor’s new musical project, How To Destroy Angels.
The problem with Reznor’s lyrics is that the message, apart from being old and unoriginal, is essentially shallow.
The bullshit detector really goes into overdrive when his wife Mariqueen Maandig sings “When I lie on top of you I’m afraid.”
Really? When it comes to songs about fear in relationships there’s something about this husband and wife team that just doesn’t feel genuine.
If you take out the tired philosophy and the contrived sexual fears, what are you left with? Some reasonably good music as it happens.
Not for the whole album mind, and it’s not quite sure of what style it wants to be, but the precision and clarity of those trademark bleak, industrial blips and glitches work well with vocals.
The interaction between Maandig’s silken, oft manipulated singing and Reznor’s voices is sublime as they call and respond to each other, echoing or finishing each other’s lines.
It’s when Welcome Oblivion escapes the shadow of NIN, that it’s at strongest – and strangest. “Ice Age” is built on the primitive sound of an instrument that sounds like a thumb piano, and bizarrely, its mountain wandering feel could see it having escaped from the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
It’s the distinctive highlight of a record that clearly wants to lift off and escape its Nine Inch Nails influence but never quite leaves the ground.
