I fucking looooove Nine Inch Nails; I've no idea how else to begin this page. Trent Reznor and company have spent nearly forty years really carving something uniquely, beautifully jagged.

I've been a fan of Depeche Mode for several years now, so the festering pop-style reminiscent of them featured on Pretty Hate Machine is a real treat; however, the raw, ethereal bite of both The Downward Spiral and The Fragile has proven ridiculously influential on me. The brands of bit-crushing and sampling that Trent was pulling out of his ass in the '90s are just wild, and I admire his introspective lyricism. It's seldom saccharine and it's introspectively blunt.

I'm not quite as much of a fan of With Teeth and Year Zero, though "Every Day is Exactly the Same" is one of my favorite NIN songs. Something about the more... "traditional" (?) rock style of the former is jarring when you go back even just one Halo to Still.

The Slip is... fine. It's okay. It still revolves around a more radio-friendly sound, but it's a good album, in my purview. Hesitation Marks "marked" (hah) the return of that pulsating, skinless sound from the band's first few albums, and it's pretty great. Give "In Two" a listen if you're interested.

Beyond the traditional studio stuff, the film scores produced by Trent and Atticus are great, too. Perhaps the only aspect of The Social Network that I enjoyed consistently was its soundtrack; "A Familiar Taste" is an instrumental with tack-sharp, silent wit that fits perfectly with a billionaire's rise to power.