For the month of October, I’m taking the #OctAtoZBandChallenge challenge. The premise is simple. Pick a band starting with the day’s assigned alphabet letter and then choose a song from that band.
Day 14
Well after the hey dey of Nine Inch Nails, particularly the Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral years, this song and album were off my radar. If anything, “The Hand That Feeds” is a reminder not to give up on a great band and assume they’ve done their best work already and can’t get back to form. In recent years, we’ve seen that can be a mistake. Bands like Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers continue to be relevant – and this track proves Nine Inch Nails was able to accomplish the same feat more than a decade after it exploded on the scene.
“The Hand That Feeds” still captures the same angsty essence of NIN. The tempo-driven, percussion-barraged, distortion-soaked instrumentation is all there. But something feels different. While the seminal songs from Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral seemed to reveal Reznor’s wallow in self-pity and self-destruction, this newer version of NIN flips the switch. The song comes across as a warning from a protagonist that is largely in control. It’s a band reinvented, but one that never lost its musical identity.
“Just how deep do you believe? Will you bite the hand that feeds?”