Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero
Last Tuesday, Nine Inch Nails came out with their latest CD, Year Zero.
I had already downloaded the album a few weeks ago and had been listening to it since.
On Sunday, The NIN Hotline posted a link to a review on IGN that essentially bashed the album. The review wasn't very thorough and sounded almost like the reviewer hadn't listened to the album yet.
That got me thinking. Perhaps it wasn't that the reviewer hadn't listened to the album yet. Perhaps it was that the reviewer hadn't yet listened to the album multiple times yet.
The first time I listened to the album I was... not disappointed... but... not really impressed. Then again, I listened to it on my computer with my crappy old computer speakers closest to me (the nicer speakers are further away and work good for movies when I'm sitting back but not music when I'm actually at my desk). Then I listened to it again. And again. Each time I heard something new. A new layer. A new drum beat. A new guitar riff. A new [some instrument I couldn't identify] noise.
The songs started to grow on me. They crept into my subconscious. I found myself humming the lyrics, tapping the beat on my desk. I started to pick out favorite songs (God Given, In This Twilight, Zero-Sum). It started to come together.
Music reviewers have a responsibility, both to the artists they are reviewing and to their readership to accurately reflect an album's merits. If the IGN author did not listen to the music "in depth", then he did not live up to his responsibility, in my opinion. If, on the other hand, the author did get deep down into the music and still had that opinion... then I guess I'll just have to respectfully disagree.