Album review: Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks (Polydor)

The album title apparently refers to the tentative blade-testing marks made by potential suicides and self-harmers, and the music remains a suitably scarified blend of electronic noise and prickly synthetic beats, at its best evoking the urgent trepidation of “Copy Of A”, a fretful piece about loss of identity and programmed responses. The scuttling pulses and itchy rhythms drive Trent Reznor's explorations of alienation, loneliness, self-hatred, surveillance paranoia and mind control, which on tracks like “Satellite” and “Various Methods Of Escape” recall Cabaret Voltaire's pioneering work of three decades ago, albeit more slickly sculpted for chart action A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

Download: Copy Of A; Came Back Haunted; Satellite