Hesitation Marks (2013)
Hesitation Marks is a 2013 alternative rock album by Nine Inch Nails.
Nine Inch Nails broke a five-year silence with this eighth studio album, Trent Reznor's first new material since 2008's The Slip. Reznor produced it with his usual partners Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, but the sound is leaner and colder than the guitar-heavy records that made the band's name, leaning on brittle funk grooves, glitching electronics and a lot of deliberate empty space. It arrived as Reznor's only album for Columbia, made by a musician now sober and older, picking at old wounds with fresh precision. Restless and self-aware, it is industrial rock built for headphones rather than the pit.
Quick answers
What is Hesitation Marks about?
Nine Inch Nails broke a five-year silence with this eighth studio album, Trent Reznor's first new material since 2008's The Slip. Reznor produced it with his usual partners Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, but the sound is leaner and colder than the guitar-heavy records that made the band's name, leaning on brittle funk grooves, glitching electronics and a lot of deliberate empty space. It arrived as Reznor's only album for Columbia, made by a musician now sober and older, picking at old wounds with fresh precision. Restless and self-aware, it is industrial rock built for headphones rather than the pit.
When was Hesitation Marks released?
Hesitation Marks was released in 2013.
Who made Hesitation Marks?
Hesitation Marks is by Nine Inch Nails.
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A few thoughts on Hesitation Marks
Reznor and Ross carried the same clinical dread into film scoring, so the soundtrack to The Social Network makes a natural companion, all pulsing unease. The video game Doom (2016) channels NIN's industrial aggression into pure momentum, and David Fincher's Se7en shares the grimy, mechanical atmosphere the band trades in.
Nine Inch Nails at their rawest and most abrasive
Hesitation Marks is Trent Reznor picking at old wounds with fresh precision after a five-year silence. These earlier Nine Inch Nails records show where that scar tissue came from, trading its lean chill for heavier guitars, industrial noise, and the raw fury that made the band's name.
Colder electronic reinventions from restless artists
Hesitation Marks leans on brittle funk grooves, glitching electronics, and deliberate empty space, a leaner and colder sound for Reznor. These share that appetite for reinvention, pulling established acts toward stark electronic textures and headphone detail rather than the louder records that first defined them.