Nine Inch Nails - The Slip (2008)

Over the past few years, Trent Reznor has gone from obnoxious recluse releasing albums decades at a time, to pissed off digital media innovator. Sure he introduced label-less ways of releasing music online pre-Radiohead, but during all this internet pioneering, when did he forget about the music? It appears Reznor is more interested in influencing the industry than influencing genres. Of course, that's probably because he's been making the same album over and over. There might be a new sense of an ambiance, drone direction in The Slip, but it's not enough to impress me. It's as if the quality of the music has decreased with the quality of the presentation. An album released for free online in low quality simply doesn't demand the same kind of standards. It's like when people work from home. They don't put on a suit to sit in front of their computer, so eventually they just start wearing jeans, then pajamas, and then eventually they get too lazy to work at all. Instead, they spend their days watching episodes of Maury and only spend an hour or two doing any actual work. Reznor has the same mind set. Reznor needs to worry less about the industry and more about himself as an artist. But hey, at least it's better than Ghosts I-IV, which I'm sure is all most fans care about.