“Ghosts I-IV” – Nine Inch Nails

Rating: 4 / 10

None of the music on Nine Inch Nail’s latest endeavor is ground-breaking; anyone with a copy of Pro Tools and an Aphex Twin album could have produced the same results.

“Ghosts I-IV” is 36 tracks of instrumental work that Trent Reznor and his fellow industrial cohorts worked on for a 10-week period last fall. While none of the music is particularly the jaw-dropping, revolutionary work that NIN made in the ’90s, it’s a concept album with one clear concept: imagery.

NIN mastermind Reznor has described the album as being “a soundtrack to daydreams.” Each track sets the ambience for an imagined place in the listeners head. Some are subtle, melancholic, piano-driven songs while others are in-your-face-industrial-metal-bleep-blips. Regardless, each track is supposed to unlock or evoke a subjective meaning, unique to everyone who listens.

While some tracks like “Ghosts III – 21” sound like the recurring theme of “American Beauty,” others sound like the complete soundtrack to a video game. With 36 tracks, and two hours of music, it’s hard to stomach everything at once. Each track has a different sound, feel and length, so trying to personalize and connect with four volumes of instrumental work is harder than it looks.

Mediocre or not, Reznor deserves all of the praise that he gets when he’s talking to himself in front of the mirror. Reznor should be applauded for his contributions to music throughout the years, and for his passionate drive to stick it to the man after he left Interscope Records last year, but Reznor now looks to be in a part of his career where he just doesn’t care anymore. He’s going to make what he wants, whenever he wants and make a fortune off of it, even if his new ways of digitally getting the album seem sincere.

Die-hard fans of NIN will no doubt love this album because, face it, if Trent Reznor recorded himself defecating and added a bass line, it would be considered a masterpiece. “Ghosts I-IV” is a failed experiment, but it’s a solid attempt at getting people involved with music other than Hot 100 radio.