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 - Not As Bad As Everyone Thinks[WITH_TEETH] is probably (gasp) my second favorite album by Nine Inch Nails. Yeah its a departure, but change is good. I can listen to this album front and back. How rare is that to find in an album today? The drums and bass on this album are amazing, very catchy album, maybe not his best, but definitely a 5 star album Rating:  - every song is exactly the samewell, no, it's not really, but it may as well be. here's the thing, in retrospect this is clearly a transitional album. this is trent reznor playing with a band trying to find his sound, trying to get back on track after the commercial failure of "the fragile". he's trying to focus and update his sound, without losing any of his edge. in many ways he accomplishes this, with modern-sounding production and an attempt at balancing noise with dance beats and catchy hooks. the problem is, he doesn't get there. he's experiementing with different sounds and ideas trying to find what works, but only a few succeed. listening to the follow-up "year zero" you can see where "with teeth" was heading. the political ideas, the post-apocalyptic imagery, the more conceptual and less personal songs are the trails he followed to greater success on "year zero". here he still has holdover angsty-diary tracks that say the same thing as always in less interesting ways. "every day is exactly the same" works best, while "the hand that feeds" worms into you despite being annoying and uninspired. "only" rips off "down in it" without showing any growth. the rest of the album has its moments, but often it sounds forced, as though trent is trying too consciously to make a nine inch nails album. despite flashes of brilliance, "with teeth" sounds like any of the flash-in-the-pan nine inch nails wannabes that came and went in the 90s. thankfully, trent avoided their fate and crafted a brilliant follow up. if any nin album can be skipped and forgotten, this is it. Rating:  - Pzzzt!Those of us who've followed this band since the inception are disgraced. However, there are two radio hits for those who love to chew bubblegum. Rating:  - Not his best but still dam goodNot as good as any of his previous work but it still dam good. I really like the move to 5.1 surround sound on the DVD version. Rating:  - Disappointing to a fanI was so happy with my NIN collection (Pretty Hate Machine, Broken, Downward Spiral, Further Down the Spiral, and Year Zero), I decided to expand it and bought With Teeth. To be honest, I think I could do without it. I don't think it deserves the four-star rating it has, or even a three-star rating for that matter. After giving it a couple of full listens and listening to some favorites a few more times, even the songs I initially liked started making me ill. Though NIN is known for dark themes, the main theme of With Teeth seems to be nothing but self-pity. I could relate to more songs on the other albums, but With Teeth drones on about incomprehensible personal issues. I just can't dig Trent's whiney voice to music that is less sophisticated and less melodic than his other work. On the whole, it all sounds just very immature and self-centered. I have no idea why this album got popular. After listening on and off for almost 15 years, I still enjoy my other NIN albums and I quickly became almost addicted to Year Zero. If you really like old NIN too, you probably won't like With Teeth. By the way, the DVD content doesn't make it any better of a value. It's more like just a promo for all the rest of his albums, which I thought was quite lame.
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