Okay, yes, yes, finally, we are doing it. The Nine Inch Nails ranking. A sweet little tier list of all of the Nine Inch Nails major albums and projects.

Nine Inch Nails, of course, being the brainchild originally of singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist Mr. Trent Reznor. Later down the road, also bringing on none other than Atticus Ross to be a part of the project. Formed in 1988, it's undergone many different subtle iterations over the years, resulting in numerous classics in the industrial rock and industrial metal genres, which is why I thought it would be fitting to come on here and talk about those releases in a tier list. At least a few of those records I have given some recent thoughts on in reviews, but a majority of the Nine Inch Nails catalog I have not addressed formally.

Okay, here we are, tier list right next to my head, and of course, we are going to go through these records chronologically, which puts us right at the 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine, which is maybe one of the only things about this record, the title that I think has, I don't know, aged pretty weirdly about it. I mean, it was obviously overly dramatic and outlandish for its time as well, but overall, I think Pretty Hate Machine still sounds fantastic today. Though I think it is maybe the Nine Inch Nails album you could make the strongest case for in terms of it sounding dated.

Personally, while it is true, Trent Reznor is showcasing his influences on his sleeve pretty boldly on this record, I happen to have a really big soft spot for a lot of those influences when it comes to a lot of the electronic music and dance pop of the 80s, new wave music, too. Electro and EBM that was coming out of this era, and maybe Trent's biggest inspiration on this record, which I would say handily, is Prince.

In fact, a lot of the time I kind of like to see this album as kind of like I'm listening to an angrier, more edgy, rock-oriented version of Prince, frankly. That's actually what I enjoy so much about it, as well as a lot of the standout singles and highlights on this record, whether it's “Terrible Lie,” whether it's “Head Like a Hole,” whether it's tracks that are honestly super funky, like "Down In It."

The track list on this thing is just banger after banger after banger, though, again, I do feel like with a lot of the influences on this thing feeling so and sounding so vintage on the modern music landscape, maybe the appeal has grown to be a bit more niche over the years. But I was kind of raised in an era where a lot of the sounds and influences that inspired this record were still super relevant.

So while I can see some people kind of like putting this record in a B tier because it's maybe not seen as groundbreaking or as influential when it comes to the aesthetics of modern heavy music, I still think this is a landmark album with killer songwriting, and frankly, it was really impressive for Trent on a debut record to be punching at basically the same amount of impact and intensity as more established artists in the industrial genre up until this point. Like, the only acts around this time period that I would like kind of put on the same level as what Trent was doing with this record are like Godflesh or Ministry, or of course the classic Killing Joke, whose 1990 album dropped right after this, I would say, is one of their best too.

But yeah, when it comes to industrial rock, a genre that precedes the formation of Nine Inch Nails by about a decade or so, there were already multiple acts that had put out fantastic records in the genre already. Meanwhile, here comes Trent, who's kind of jumping to the front of the line with this album because of the grooves, because of the pop flair of a lot of the songwriting on this record. Like writing literal hits that were at least for an American audience, kind of broadening the popularity of the genre overall. But yeah, in my opinion, really excellent record, well-written and produced album, even if it's not as like conceptual or as pioneering aesthetically as some other Nine Inch Nails records that we will be talking about, which is why I would put it in the A tier. I think it's a banger album and one of the best debuts of the eighties.

Then, of course, following this, we have the sophomore Nine Inch Nails album, The Downward Spiral, the big mother, the record that you could argue even more kind of put the project on the map and brought Trent Reznor to even higher levels of mainstream fame and acclaim. I am one of many millennials who can attest to essentially having the music video for “Closer” give them nightmares on MTV.

Cause as edgy, and as strange and as overly sexual as the music video and song together were, that track was in heavy rotation almost all the time on MTV. But yeah, this record I'm living and dying by this album. This is an all-out classic, incredible album for so many reasons. Like, not only are the singles on this one even bigger and better than they were on the debut, but you can also make the case that Trent Reznor like really kind of hit upon on that classic trademark Nine Inch Nails sound with this album. Leaning even more into his rock and metal influences on this one with heavier, more aggressive drums, crunchy, searing guitars. The lyrics and songwriting are even darker, even grimmer, edgier, the intense self-loathing on some of these tracks too. It's a record that often has been imitated, but never has been duplicated, which is why, for industrial rock, it still stands so tall after so many decades.

Of course, it also helps that when it comes to this style of music, especially in the mainstream, Trent is handily one of the best, if not the best, vocalists in his lane. Not just because of his knack for melody when he does work it into these tracks, but his performances; his delivery is just so expressive. Whether it's pain or hatred or just pure lust and thirst. Just every emotion on this record comes through with such supreme intensity. On top of all of that, what kind of gives this record the edge over Pretty Hate Machine is not only its unique aesthetics, super groundbreaking and influential aesthetics for the time, but also the track list itself, the album flow.

The Downward Spiral is an experience, not simply an assembly of well-put-together songs, like you could say is the case for Pretty Hate Machine. The only downside to how great this album is is it kind of puts Trent and Nine Inch Nails in a position where nearly every record afterwards is living in the shadow of The Downward Spiral somewhat. But still, maybe you could say some of the lyrics are a bit too angsty or edgy for your taste, but outside of that, like, this record is pretty much absolutely bulletproof, in my eyes, which is why I'm going to go throw it in the S tier.

Okay, next, following with that five-year gap pattern that Trent Reznor really kind of solidified out of the gate, we have the third Nine Inch Nails album, The Fragile, a record that I haven't really spoken about too much in depth over the years. Sorry about that. I apologize. Dropped in 1999, a double album for Trent and the project, and one that has received a lot of accolades and praise over the years. And for good reason, it's gone down as an absolute classic. And I can see why because pound for pound, a lot of the songwriting on this record is just as good as the songwriting on The Downward Spiral. In fact, I would say "We're in This Together" as well as "Starfuckers, Inc." are two of his best singles of all time. Even if over the years, they haven't garnered quite as much attention as "Closer." The song "No, You Don't" is handily one of his heaviest songs ever. So it's not like there's a drop in intensity or punch on this record, either.

But what makes The Fragile a very different experience from The Downward Spiral by comparison is that you can really start to hear where Trent is trying to take his production chops and the project in general at this very early stage in its existence in terms of sound design, in terms of soundtrack work. You have instrumental cuts on here. You have songs and pieces that clearly exist purely for the vibe, for the moodiness, for the aesthetic, for their more compositional aspects. Whether you're talking about the fanfare or the hellish march that happens on the track "Pilgrimage." There's also the genuinely creepy finish of "Even Deeper"; "Just Like You Imagined" is a pretty abstract cut too. While these moments are interesting, there are some times where I feel like they bloat out the track list, maybe a little bit too much.

Still, overall, there's a lot to love about The Fragile, especially many of the funkier cuts on disc two. And even if the record does overstay its welcome just a little bit, it's still a pretty amazing album in the Nine Inch Nails catalog, which is why I would handily put this one in the A tier as well.

Okay, next, we are moving on to With Teeth, another record in the Nine Inch Nails catalog I haven't really had too many opportunities to talk about in depth over the years. And it's funny, this album came out when I was in college, and remember pretty vividly a lot of people messing with it at the time. Though I wasn't too crazy about it myself, and I could see why I wasn't at the time. As in a lot of ways, I see With Teeth as Trent fully transitioning away from a lot of the old-school, funky, and new wave influences that inspired his early work. His first three albums, at least to some degree. And kind of swapping that out for just fully, completely digital production and electronics that have almost a, a much more calculated, cold IDM sort of feel to them. Much more sterile in comparison with the first three albums.

But with that being said, Trent does also bring in a lot more percussion and drum loops that sound and feel live. And guitar and bass mixes, which are a lot chunkier, a lot louder, more compressed, more distorted. So if you've been following Nine Inch Nails up until this point, it's a very stark and noticeable change. And it's a change that I feel like I have come to appreciate a lot more in retrospect over the years, especially since, at the end of the day, the songwriting on this LP, in my opinion, is still very good. Trent is still writing and assembling very crisp, textured, industrial bangers on this one, with "The Hand That Feeds" being, once again, one of his best singles, like it's an all-time career single. And most of the deep cuts on this thing are equally good. Yeah, it's a little ironic that a record named With Teeth would have slightly less teeth than the two preceding albums by comparison, but it's only to a slight degree.

While I will say With Teeth is certainly Trent's most mature-sounding album up until this point, it still rocks. And there is something to be said for him, kind of like pairing the trackless down to a more trimmer listen in comparison with The Fragile and not totally allowing a lot of his temptations around, more instrumental stuff and more texture-based compositions, kind of eating up the runtime of this album. So I'm going to put it in the B tier. Still a very solid, enjoyable Nine Inch Nails record, even if it's not like holding a candle per se to The Downward Spiral, I would still say it's a must-listen.

Now here's where, in the Nine Inch Nails catalog, things get a little interesting and surprising because With Teeth drops in 2005, pretty much keeping consistent with this very big multi-year gap in between each Nine Inch Nails project. Year Zero drops almost immediately after. Just a few years after, in 2007; With Teeth. And there are a lot of fans who will put Year Zero in the same league as With Teeth, and on the surface, I could see why. It does share a lot aesthetically with With Teeth, mostly because I feel like Trent really hasn't given himself and the project enough time to formulate a new sound, a new direction. Plus, I feel like the speed at which Trent is able to produce music at this point is allowing him to just have more output. And while in one breath, more material is more output, and certainly that's cool. Simultaneously, I feel like the lack of novelty, and punch, and excitement is starting to diminish, which is why sort of I see this slightly more prolific era in the Nine Inch Nails catalog as being like With Teeth, with diminishing returns.

Because truly and honestly, I see Year Zero as like a much worse version of With Teeth. The instrumentals are way blander. The songwriting is much, much, much, much goofier. That's the other thing: I feel like if Trent came out with a similar-sounding album, but the songs were equally as good, Year Zero would be totally fine. Year Zero would be up there with any other great Nine Inch Nails album. Like, some of the hooks on "Vile" and "Me, I'm Not" are, like, far from Trent's best writing and feature vocal parts that are so silly to me, they feel kind of beneath him. Meanwhile, his performance on "Capital G," in my opinion, feels almost demo-quality. Like he's willing to put almost anything out there at this point.

And on the production side, the mixing, the sound of this record overall feels very, very brittle in comparison with, With Teeth as well. It's a lot of noise without very much in the way of any texture or depth, which, again, is why I just don't see Year Zero as being anywhere near as interesting as not just With Teeth, but pretty much anything Trent had done up until this point. I would put it over in the D tier. I don't want to be, like, too dismissive because even a simply okay Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails project is a landmark moment for industrial rock in the mainstream, but I just don't think Year Zero is that interesting or great of a record.

Now, a lot of what I feel and have to say about Year Zero, I think also kind of carries over onto The Slip, which dropped not too long after that because again, this is Trent Reznor's, more prolific era in the 2000s. Once again, there is a lot of aesthetic overlap and crossover with With Teeth, also with Year Zero as well, but I think Trent kind of streamlined the songwriting process and song structuring on this record a little more, decided to go for a slightly more aggressive experience this time around. I will say, in kind of the trio of With Teeth, Year Zero and The Slip, this is the most aggressive and distorted and blown out of those three albums.

It's maybe the most direct and punchy and to the point, because of that very visceral energy going into a lot of the recordings and tracks on this record. I will say it's a more fun listen than Year Zero, but still doesn't have the songwriting power that With Teeth did. So it's kind of landing more in the middle. For me, it's decent, but still simply okay.

And before I move any deeper into this tier list, I probably should address the Ghosts series. And even though two other Ghosts projects came later down the road, I would like to more or less address all of them right here, kind of kitten caboodle style. Because again, the Ghost series was initially put out there during this very, prolific era in Trent's catalog. And yeah, I did sort of address the fact that all of those instrumental cuts, those abstract bits, those separate, vibey and textural moments that were kind of coloring much of The Fragile, they weren't making it onto these albums; they were instead being placed onto multi-tiered projects like this, where you're getting these many, many, many instrumental and abstract cuts stacked on top of each other across multiple discs, some of which are more electronic, some of which are more rockin', some of which are more ambient. Like lots of different vibes and aesthetics and styles and flavors, threaded throughout all of the Ghosts pieces on these discs. But with that being said, while there are a lot of cool ideas and grooves and riffs and synth passages that are featured throughout these tracks, it still doesn't stop the overall experience of these discs from feeling like a compilation of odds and ends.

Like, all of these tracks are still clearly a show of Trent's imagination, his creativity, his incredible and unique production chops. But simultaneously, like there isn't a level of purpose and intentionality going into these Ghosts discs, even in the- the later ones that would come down the road, that, to me compare with a record like even With Teeth. So I mean, while again on one level I find these instrumental cuts and abstract cuts, pretty interesting, they don't stand up to me like quality level with, some of Trent's best stuff in terms of like album craft, you know? And part of the point of this tier list is kind of judging the listening experiences of these projects as albums.

I just don't really find the listening experience especially like in a replay context, of Ghosts to be that fulfilling. Like I've heard them. I thought they were mildly intriguing. I feel like they give me more insight into Trent's creative process and what he does in the studio. But do I ever want to go back to these projects? Not particularly. Revisiting them for this video didn't exactly like change my mind either, which is why I would put this one over in the D tier as well.

Okay, now moving on, we're going into a more modern era of Nine Inch Nails and actually talking about records that I have reviewed on the channel in some capacity. Here we have the 2013 album Hesitation Marks, which was an album that I thought was okay. I think I was pretty critical of it and even underwhelmed to a degree like many critics were upon its release when it comes to you know, critical reception. And I could see why this album would be perceived as like kind of a mid-tier Nine Inch Nails release. Maybe not that interesting in the grander scheme of things because it's far from being as heavy or aggressive or as thrilling as a Downward Spiral or as many of the, highlights from The Fragile as well as the debut. But with that being said, I do feel like this record is better than a bulk of the material that Trent was coming out with in the 2000s. In retrospect, it has grown on me a little bit; I think the songwriting is sharper. I feel like he gave himself an appropriate amount of time to not only formulate better songs and better choruses, but to come through with a different approach sonically and musically and production-wise on this one. I feel like with this record also, one thing that I like about it is that funky Trent is back.

He is making funky beats on this one again that feel like, sometimes, a bit of a callback to his earlier stuff, though it's not quite giving new wave and synth funk like we were getting in the earliest years of Nine Inch Nails. It's a grooviness that feels more borrowed from a lot of modern electronic music at the time, which is not necessarily a bad thing. So I appreciate Trent kind of gearing some of these grooves and tracks more toward the dance floor once again. Also liking Trent really diving into the sequencers on this project, what sounds like more analog synths too. For sure it's not a mind-blowing album. There are a few harebrained ideas here and there, as well as on the track "Everything," which feels almost like a peppy indie-flavored rock number that isn't necessarily like, in the Nine Inch Nails wheelhouse per se. It's by no means a perfect record, but it does feel like a little bounce back to me in retrospect, not quite classic aggressive in-your-face industrial rock vibes, but better than The Slip, better than Year Zero, at least on par with With Teeth. Even if it is going for something noticeably different, I would put this one in the B tier as well, honestly.

But yeah, if you like me, weren't too crazy about that one upon release, I would encourage a revisit for sure. Then we are going to close things out with Bad Witch over here, the latest Nine Inch Nails project album. If you want to call it that, though, for a Nine Inch Nails album, it's pretty trim, honestly. And that's not to say that there's been any shortage of, Trent Reznor activity during this time period. And before, of course, there are Nine Inch Nails EPs that were dropping around this time. I mean, I haven't really talked about any of the Nine Inch Nails EPs in the catalog. Apologies for that.

There's some pretty good banger EPs in the Nine Inch Nails catalog. I'm not denying that. The fans know what they are, and I feel like the takes on those records are pretty uncontroversial, or at least, many of mine would be. And of course, in addition to this, you have all of the soundtrack work, you have How to Destroy Angels. I'm bringing all of this up to say, it's not like Trent was absolutely not active at this point in the Nine Inch Nails catalog and was giving us just barely anything with this 30-minute-long record. But now that the dust has settled and a lot of those extracurricular activities have grown less relevant over the years or just don't really loom as large as the main Nine Inch Nails catalog, this final Nine Inch Nails album, or at least the final project that we have to talk about, just feels so inconsequential or just not at the level of length or depth or substance that you would hope for from a project that has put out pretty massive records over the years.

In addition to that, it's been so long since we've had a proper follow-up to this record as well. I mean, of course, not too long ago, there was the Nine Inch Nails, Boys Noise collab, which was cool and had highlights on it for sure. But still, that's not a proper follow-up to Bad Witch, which itself, in the overall Nine Inch Nails catalog, is fine. Look, there's some bangers on this record. There are elements of it that I feel like you could argue are doing, maybe on some level, what The Slip was trying to accomplish, but pulling it off much better. In terms of giving us sounds and aesthetics that are very distorted, very aggressive, very blown out, tracks that are to the point that are even explosive, like in the case of the opener, but still offer just a bit more depth and nuance and detail. So I mean, it's a likable project for sure; it's just that it kind of leaves me wanting more. And in a lot of ways, vibes like a glorified EP versus like an actual proper Nine Inch Nails album.

Of course, in addition to this, you also get, like, some touches of soundtrack Trent with the insane horn sections on "Play the Goddamned Part," the lengthier cuts that finish the whole thing out that are a lot more atmospheric and electronic and spacey. I think it's a bit easier to appreciate what Trent is doing at this point in the Nine Inch Nails catalog when you see this in the context of the Add Violence EP and Not The Actual Events, for sure. But still, as a standalone release, Bad Witch is merely just okay; it really only serves as a reminder that I feel like it's time for some real, new, proper Nine Inch Nails music, which is why I'm going to put this one in the C tier as well.

And for now, that is where the Nine Inch Nails catalog stands for me.

Nine Inch Nails forever.