Album Review: How To Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion

Welcome Oblivion has already acquired a stigma. The debut album of Trent Reznor's post-Nine Inch Nails project with longterm collaborators Atticus Ross and Rob Sheridan and spouse Mariqueen Maandig, Welcome Oblivion has already earned considerable criticism as a substandard Nine Inch Nails album marred by Maandig. All at once, that is chauvinistic bullshit, fanboy nonsense and distantly accurate.

It's a significant departure from Nine Inch Nails. While unsurprisingly dressed in Reznor's characteristic style, it's only precedent within the NIN catalogue is 2008's instrumental Ghosts – it owes far more to Reznor and Ross's work on The Social Network OST. It's glossy, digital and abstract. If Nine Inch Nails were a pop act bathed in abstract noise, Welcome Oblivion sounds the opposite: abstract noise reluctantly sculpted into poppier architecture.

Maandig is the arguable weakpoint. However, she is not a weak performer. It's clear that How To Destroy Angels are simply developing. Where their eponymous debut EP found Maandig singing Reznor-lite melodies, singles like Ice Age and How Long show her developing her own style. Reznor, Ross and Sheridan still haven't quite figured out how to consistently meet her halfway (nor she them), though, and that means she occasionally sounds a little lost in the debris.

However, Welcome Oblivion is not substandard. It's some of the best production of Reznor's career and is the furthest he's advanced his sound as an artist since 1999's The Fragile. The songs themselves, meanwhile, are consistently engaging. When the band truly comes together (On The Wing for example), they're stunning. One just hopes Reznor doesn't ditch the project once NIN are back in action. Their next album could be astounding.