Turtle on 25/4/2007 at 02:26
Thanks.
I woulda confused the shit out of myself when I finally took that out of the CD player.
Gingerbread Man on 25/4/2007 at 02:28
I followed this from the beginning, through the chatrooms and the angry sniper and the number clues and the whatever else, and it seemed to me that it veered strongly away from Interesting and into the realm of The Gay at roughly the time it was revealed that the Presence is actually a big fucking hand instead of something that looked like a big fucking hand. Oh good.
Tell you what, Trent... why not just change your name to Michael Stipe right now and save us all a couple of years of uncertainty.
For instance: If the Parepin does what it's supposed to, that doesn't change the fact that there's a huge alien presence digging its fingers into the ground. What you gonna do about THAT, government? There are some big-ass holes in the AR.
It's a great idea, and it was executed very well, but in the final analysis it became disappointing in short order. Kinda like the Lost ARG.
I did like that "dropping random USB drives in public toilets" angle, though. That was brilliant.
And I heartily endorse well-conceived ARGs for marketing in the future... to me it's the current envelope-edge and worthy of vast exploitation... but it has to have STAYING POWER, niggas.
ercles on 25/4/2007 at 02:39
I do think this cd is brilliant (so was With Teeth imo), but the thing that really impresses me with this is that someones actually trying to have a go with something different for a change. I find it very exciting when an artist actually sits down and thinks things through before writing a concept album or the like (take not all you My Chemical Romances out there).
Like him or hate him, Trent is very fucking good at doing this kind of thing. He's whole "screw the fans I'm gonna do what I damn well please" approach means even more fans in the end.
Gingerbread Man on 25/4/2007 at 02:45
Don't get I wrong, I've been a fan since PHM was creeping its way into the "alternative" radio scene... But Reznor has as much "screw the fans, I'm going to do what I want" as Christina Aguilera does. He's a savvy guy, and he goes with the winds.
Sadly, those winds often point toward millennial-hippie bullshit about global warming + aliens.
Stitch on 25/4/2007 at 04:18
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
He's a savvy guy, and he goes with the winds.
I must have missed the "overlong, suffocated, and detuned" wind that was apparently all the rage back in 1999.
For that matter, everything you just said is completely balls. Reznor can't deny his hook savvy no matter how hard he tries, but musically Nine Inch Nails has always forged its own path, sometimes to its detriment.
Also: The Presence has been revealed to actually be a hand? I've only been sporadically following this stuff, but last I heard it was still something of a mystery.
Toxicfluff on 25/4/2007 at 22:11
Well, the lyrics are still pretty awful and the ARG concept is riddled with cliched writing and thick cheese (fake resistance meeting busted up by fake cops with fake guns and firecrackers... this is definitely the taste of fascism. Not the london dungeon in swat gear. Fascism.).... but the album's damn good. Really heartening actually, because after With Teeth I thought yet another of my favourite artists had tipped over the hill.
