Once an album has received more than a hundred reviews in Amazon.com (the count is at 229 for “With Teeth” as of this writing), the law of averages starts to sink in. There will be those who praise it no matter what and there will be those who trash it irregardless of what you say to them. The truth is, in my humble opinion, that this is a return to NIN’s roots, much in a line similar to “Pretty Hate Machine”. “That’s great!”, you may say. Not so fast, I say to you.

Trent Reznor has been an artist whose albums have generally been proportional in power and intimacy to how tormented he is. In “With Teeth“, Trent seems to have come out of the dark corners he was roaming around the turn of the century. The result, in spite of several very strong and LOUD NIN moments throughout it, is an album that pales by comparison with its predecessor double studio album (“The Fragile”) or the iconic “Downward Spiral”.

I find some songs I can’t stop playing: the opening (which is perhaps one of the most reminiscent of his debut album, “Pretty Hate Machine”), “Every Day is Exactly the Same” and the two closing tracks. All in all, I will go with four stars on this one. I reserve the five stars in NIN’s discography for his past works. Nevertheless, a very good album.