After six long years, a new Nine Inch Nails album - "With Teeth" - was released on Tuesday. I picked it up on the way in to work. (I also picked up the Episode III soundtrack, which was released the same day, but I can't listen to that for two more weeks!) Conducting job interviews and teaching classes notwithstanding, I've pretty much been listening to the album non-stop.

Turns out that Trent Reznor is still the voice inside my head. This is the album I needed right now. The feel of the songs is reminiscent of "Pretty Hate Machine", but the lyrics are far more mature. Being alone, monotony, achieving what you want, are you who you want to be, are you where you want to be...all topics I've been thinking about a lot the past year or so. It's almost as if he heard the voices in my head and set them to music for me. The music itself can range from raucous to eerily beautiful, and Reznor's emotional range - introspective, rowdy, melancholy, angry - is as good as ever. I'm happy with the maturity of the album, because I'd hate to see as talented an artist not grow. I'm very pleased.

Is it his best work? No, but I must say that this album caught me immediately, whereas "The Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile" grew on me over time. And my personal favorite is the limited, stripped down "Still" album, released in limited amounts with "And All that Could Have Been" (live). In many ways, this is a more readily accessible album, like "Pretty Hate Machine". The major drawback is that there aren't any instrumentals, yet when I think back, I didn't like the instrumentals on "The Fragile" at first. I'm hoping that he'll release another album soon, as this started off as an album called "Bleedthrough", but he changed the direction midway through the project. Release the rest, Trent, soon! Don't make me wait another six years!

And I've already found the track - "Beside You In Time" - that will cause me to speed across the Great Plains on my next roadtrip, immediately after the NIN concert at the end of the month. Woo!