Pretty Hate Machine – Nine Inch Nails

The forces that collided in 1989 around the release of Trent Reznor’s “Pretty Hate Machine” caused major shifts in several genres of modern music, and in the overall critical trajectory of alternative music. This record succeeded in tapping the rich underground traditions of industrial electronic music, and by combining it with strong melodic songwriting both catapulted the sub-genre to a larger audience, as well as brought a new sonic palette of inspiration to multiple artists from other genres. But this single debut album became a monument in the musical landscape not only because of its transformation of genres, but also as work of the auter – the masterwork of a single artist as opposed to a group or band effort. This single source creativity would go on to inspire further music as digital music and recording technology became more widely available to non-professional and, importantly, musicians not sponsored by the recording industry.

In context, “Pretty Hate Machine” wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. Its release in 1989 shows its clear sonic link to the industrial and electronic dance music of the time. The whirring mechanical rhythms, dark ambient synth fills and grinding white noise distorted guitars were lifted directly from the playbooks of underground dance groups like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, and Front 242. But within 40 seconds of the first track, Head Like a Hole differentiates itself from its peers. The song builds predictably enough through whirring mechanical percussion loops and visceral vocal grunt/scream sounds reminiscent of the implied bodily violence of the electro-dance movement to a throbbing bass melody. But at the 40 second mark, the inhuman composition fades back in the mix for the entrance of the vocal. Unlike the vocals of typical industrial music where the human voice is either a percussive chant, or a distorted/over processed textural fill (Ministry’s Stigmata being the ultimate object lesson for this aesthetic), this vocal is something completely different: a lyric. And not only is it a lyric, but it’s composed in melodic rhyming couplets conceptually rooted in a single theme, all gathered together in a verse chorus framework. All this of course is a very convoluted way to say: popular songwriting structure.

Song by song “Pretty Hate Machine” proves again and again how the sonic palette of industrial music can be translated into popular songwriting. From the rock-anthem styling of Head like a Hole, to dark pop songs like Sin, to the rap driven Down In It to even haunting ballads like Something I Can Never Have, Reznor unflinchingly indulges the driving beats, harsh mechanical textures and distorted guitar noise of his influences. But instead of using these elements to dominate the song and bury the listener in the abstract isolationism and dehumanization that is the core of the industrial aesthetic, he uses them as independent instruments in arrangement to support the vocal. The lyric content itself then takes the next step of the transformation and anchors the dysfunctional / dystopian aesthetic of industrial music around the personal confusion, anxiety and tortured self-pity of the singer. In this, he succeeded to embody and personify the emotional and psychological alienation and dehumanization of modern life that the industrial movement sought to express in abstraction, by paradoxically giving that alienation a very human and emotionally identifiable persona.
The slow building popularity that built up around “Pretty Hate Machine” in 1989 became a fevered pitch which kept the album on the charts for two years, and became not only a commercial success for Reznor and his indie label TVT, but it sparked a new interest and new audience for industrial music. Though they were his initial inspiration, bands like Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Einsturzende Neubauten and KMFDM rode the coat tails of “Pretty Hate Machine” to a new broader audience by taking lessons from Reznor’s new use of traditional songwriting. In turn, the sonic elements of the genre found their way into the songs of new generations of bands to follow who further explored the crossovers between techno, metal, and alternative genres – Filter, Marilyn Manson and Garbage to name only a few.

But the innovation of this album doesn’t stop at this crossroads of genres. The importance of the recording is best captured in an anecdote that embodies the emergence of Nine Inch Nails at the time of its release. When I was first introduced to Pretty Hate Machine by a friend in 1989 it was the classic word of mouth marketing that indie music was built upon in the late 80s. A friend asked me if I had heard this “new band called Nine Inch Nails”. When I said I hadn’t, my friend told me “Well it’s really not a band, it’s just this one guy, but he recorded this album playing all the instruments himself and recorded it at home on his Mac…” From here a myth was born. From my first listen and my own limited knowledge of new computer recording techniques, I could easily imagine Trent Reznor building samples and drum machine loops in a basement studio somewhere in Ohio, creating this dark brooding soundscape as a backdrop for his own tortured personal psyche. And the music holds up to this myth. Compared to the “wall of sound” noise-scapes of the industrial music of the time, this music seems pared down, almost simplistic. Yet it’s simple enough for the listener to hear isolated textures, sounds and rhythms that would otherwise be lost in the sonic onslaught of Reznor’s peers. Listening to “Pretty Hate Machine” for the first time in 1989 was in many ways akin to listening to a Velvet Underground album in the late sixties – it seemed suddenly attainable to grab a guitar, form a band and write some songs. But in this case it was the realization that you could hook some instruments up to your computer and start creating music. In effect, “Pretty Hate Machine” shattered the idea that industrial and electronic music was an experimental, rarified genre of music, and brought it to the level of immediacy that was characteristic of Rock and Roll.

Of course the myth of the auter in this case was not completely true. While Reznor wrote and recorded the demos for “Pretty Hate Machine” on his own, for the final recordings he paired up with renowned engineer/producer Flood for the studio recording. Flood undoubtedly deserves the credit for being able to boil down and isolate the samples and drum loops in the mix to allow this recording to walk a fine line between the overwhelming wall of sound passages, and the subtly textured flares and sequences that fill in the gaps between Reznor’s vocal and the more aggressive musical bursts. (If there’s any signature sound to Flood’s approach behind the mixing board this may be it!). But as remarkable as the production is this record, it’s most remarkable in the way it disappears behind the myth of the auter. Even today, part of this album’s appeal is it’s artifice as a “one man show”, a soundtrack to a highly personal journey of introspection and, importantly, a singular burst of creativity. With all heady notions of musical theory and historical genre stirring aside, it’s the hallmark of a great work of art that despite the circumstances of its creation, it inspires the listener to creativity of his or her own. As “Pretty Hate Machine” seemed to lay bare the process of connecting a computer to a guitar; of joining mechanical music to the human vocal; of a connection between the digital and the analogue in the pursuit of music – this album succeeded in sparking creativity in its listeners to not only understand the means of its creation (Greenbergian modernism at its core) but also to pick up an instrument and create for themselves.