Halo 0x

I spent some time this past week going through my many, many Nine Inch Nails CDs. There really are a lot of gems buried in Trent Reznor's nationally published personal hard drive. I can't claim to be as fluent in the NIN discography as some people, but at one time I was a huge fan. For me, it started with the Quake soundtrack. I bought the Broken EP in 1996, then Pretty Hate Machine. I was still trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with this Reznor guy, when I drove to Knoxville on a whim, listening mostly to Ride the Lightning-era Metallica and cruising at my Bronco II's limit of 110mph. I arrived early, with a sore right foot (no cruise control), and with some time to kill I bought The Downward Spiral in a record store on Cumberland Ave. I parked under a bridge by the Tennessee River and played the whole record, looking through the then-revolutionary liner notes-turned booklet. Rez hooked me.

I ended up buying pretty much the whole NIN catalog, but the slow pace of Reznor's releases has caught up to me. I bought The Fragile the week it was released, and I still think it's one of the greatest double-albums ever, but I didn't bother to buy Things Falling Apart (I Napster'd it, back when Napster was free and legal) or the live DVD. Eventually I started selling off some of my old NIN remix albums, particularly the imports, after I'd burned the few tracks I really wanted to keep. I can only hope the new album, which I'm hearing should be out soon, will renew my faith.