Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch

After two EPs of similar length preceding it, Trent Reznor chose to label Bad Witch as a “full-length”, apparently to prevent it from being ignored on the marketing front. Considering the slew of short albums coming out from Kanye West lately, it’s not all that asinine to consider a 30-minute project a full-length. All of Nails’ LPs are shorter as well, the Full of Hell release last year was shorter, and the legendary Reign in Blood is shorter. It’s not really all that important to the music itself, it’s just a bit strange that this is the project they decide to label an LP, which usually signifies what an artist considers their committed artistic statement. And whether Nine Inch Nails are doing that here or not, it’s just a bit of an unusual and confusion distinction to make.

As for the music, I found myself slightly disappointed with the uncertain direction of this project. I’ve never been against Trent Reznor’s more ambient and moodier ventures, but the Not the Actual Events EP made me excited to hear Nine Inch Nails sounding intense and at least menacing again with a sense of direction and purpose after The Slip. Even after the less well-written Add Violence (which at least had a few interesting moments), Bad Witch disappoints with metallic elements so subdued and ambient sounds so meandering, it sounds like Nine Inch Nails are back at square one with no idea what to do next. On so many moments they seem keen to further their industrial reach, but only on the experimental level in the purest sense of the word, with little attention paid to composition. On so many other momemts (mostly early in the track list) they seem chained to the past, jamming in metallic crunch where it doesn’t fit.

The album opens with “Shit Mirror”, which carries a little bit of metallic energy from its entrance, but fizzles out into an industrial beat with fuzzy guitars that just fails to impress. It’s a pretty unexciting opener and one that only half-heartedly injects the band’s metallic edge into the track. The following track, “Ahead of Ourselves”, ups the glitchiness and the warbled vocals, including a little bit more of the band’s well-known industrial intensity, but it suffers from a bit of compositional chaos without the bones to hold it all together.

The more darkly ambient “Play the Goddamned Part” sounds like an interlude on an album that doesn’t need one (since it could be fully comprised of them), with an odd inclusion of saxophone that actually does help the song convey its creepy vibe. The spacey industrial rocker, “God Break Down the Door”, continues the previous track’s use of saxophone and mostly pretty well on its more well-thought-out venture through some new sounds for the band.

“I’m Not from This World” is an eerie ambient industrial piece that showcases Trent Reznor’s skill in the dark ambient side of his music. And it’s pretty well put-together as well, unlike the preceding tracks. “Over and Out” ends the album on a less brooding note, opting to center around a simple industrial beat and keep to a relatively soothing feel. Reznor’s vocals on the track sound unfitting and not very well harmonized though, and the long section on which he sings the repetitive phrase “Time is running out” just drags on and does no service to the end of the song or the album.

I’m not really sure what Nine Inch Nails were trying to do with this album, and I’m not sure what they’re trying to do with their career at this stage. I can commend them for not simply repeating themselves and turning into mere crowd-pleasers, but this album seems like such a regression and the departure from fan expectations seems like it come more from stubbornness than artistic integrity. Strangely though, it’s where they depart from their earlier style that they do well on this album, and it’s when they try to toss in those familiar industrial metal elements so haphazardly that the album suffers.