NIN

I'm really grateful to have listened to college radio in the 80's/90's. If you missed it, then all I can say is "sorry sucka, but whatever you dialed on the radio was a menstrual chunk in comparison"!

The humanistic side of Nine Inch Nails captures lyrically a glimpse of a potent generation who arrived too late for the party that was the ‘80s, and too early for a near–future apocalyptic ending that some seemed to be waiting for with baited breath. From the beginning, Nine Inch Nails embraced a dark thematic cynicism characterized by this bleak, hollow search for meaning.Like many of his contemporaries, Reznor’s lyrical standpoint resonated with the question of control and belonging. His words echo with the bitter elixir of someone who does not fit in, but still struggles with the essential hierarchies of ‘80s American life: religion, government and society. The institutions of church, state, and camaraderie that had once been the mainstays of a homogenous, seemingly happy “morning” in America were now greeted with a backlash of suspicion. As Nine Inch Nails’ generation grasped blindly for self-identity in individualism, the band’s lyrical invectives against the traditional apparatuses of love, popularity, faith, and obedience rang with a most ‘90s detachment.