So, long story in short: New Nine Inch Nails album is out..

The catch? It's all free. 

So, all the NIN fans here, get this if you haven't. And the rest 99% of active guys/girls here, download this, spread the link, and so on.

Gotta love Trent Reznor's (and Radiohead's) decision to start releasing albums like this. Now we just need more and more artists to seeing things out of the box and burn their record label contracts. This is the way you should things in modern times.

Niiiiice. Downloading now.

Semi-OT - has anyone picked up Ghosts I-IV? Thoughts?

Good for him.  I know my wife's going to absolutely flip when I tell her it's out.

when shana first showed me a harry potter movie, i thought that Snape guy was trent reznor...

I downloaded the full torrent, still waiting for this month if some shop will stock that LE version with that Data-DVD, otherwise will order the regular version.

Anyways, Ghost I-IV is, atleast for my ears, good instrumental NIN. Only if I had a mp3 player and wouldn't be so damn lazy, I would go out with Ghosts I-IV playing. Seems just the kind of music for me to hike outside on different places.

Yeah, I bought Ghosts. I really like it but there's not a huge amount to it given the run time. It's like the Quake stuff. For me, it's background music. Would make a great soundtrack.

Ghosts was the first NIN studio-album that really disappointed me. Have been a fan of NIN since the early nineties (but more so around Downward Spiral's release than after, though), but this just didn't click for me, at all. And NO, its not because I dislike instrumentals (if I did I wouldn't be on this site). Ghosts just sounds like the instrumental left-overs from the Year Zero sessions cut-and-pasted together rather sloppily, it's relation quality-wise to the rest of NIN's output is roughly the same as the relation of Lost Files to Kikuta's main body of work. Yes, that's a perfect description (if I may say so myself).

I disagree with Jay's assessment that its "like the Quake stuff". Nowhere near in either style or quality, IMO. Quake was much moodier and freakier, and much more ambient. Ghosts has heavy drums in a lot of tracks, and the sound is much closer to Year Zero (but not nearly as good).

Am looking forward to this new album, though, and will post my thoughts here when I feel like it. Uber-cool that he's offering it for free, too! One more defector from Lars Ulrich's camp, yay!

OK, have listened to this a few times, and these are my initial impressions.

Kinda mediocre, and it doesn't quite feel like a complete album. My favourite tracks are 2, 3, 4, and 6.

The instrumental tracks on this album together with Ghosts confirms what I've suspected: I like Reznor's stuff more when he sticks to what he's best at (writing catchy industrial pop anthems). Writing atmospheric music is something he better leave to those who can do it better (case in point: Corona Radiata on this new album).

Anyway, the good stuff on there is good, and I will certainly give it more spins. What do you guys think about this album?