Album Review: How To Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion

From the collapse of Nine Inch Nails comes Trent Reznor's latest project, How To Destroy Angels. That being said, it should definitely not be compared to his industrial metal plundering of old. How To Destroy Angels sees Reznor team with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan. Their debut album, Welcome Oblivion, is far more attuned to Reznor's more recent soundtrack successes (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network), and while the carefully manipulated digital sounds are clearly the works of the experimental mastermind that is Trent Reznor, Welcome Oblivion has been created for How To Destroy Angels – a leader, not a successor.

This down-tempo collection of glitched-out ambient tracks runs for 90 minutes, but it's easy to forget that an album timeframe even exists. Welcome Oblivion carries an incredibly bizarre but captivating flow. Even with the minimal and vocally-prominent Ice Age and the pop-tinged How Long sitting tidily in the album, acting almost as intervals, drawn-out esoteric sounds team with Maandig's seductively whispered vocals to really pull the listener in (vocals which, despite being perfectly suited to the mesmeric nature of the album, occasionally come off as simply half-hearted).

It comes as absolutely no surprise that the production on Welcome Oblivion is near flawless, but How To Destroy Angels still have a little bit of work to put in before they can lose the Nine Inch Nails reference point. But judging by the hypnotic content of Welcome Oblivion, that shouldn't take long at all.