About

Most Nine Inch Nails albums play like documents of sharp, turbulent mood swings. Bursts of rage give way to creeping anxiety; momentary ambiance begets nihilism and noise. It’s a routine so familiar by now that fans should be able to predict Trent Reznor’s shifting temperaments like weather patterns. So when he recently announced plans to release his new music in a series of interconnected EPs, there was hope that he might, in this condensed format, locate his best angles, find a few new ones, and leave us wanting more. 

Depending on who you ask, the refreshingly cohesive Bad Witch is either the final EP in that trilogy or his first full-length in five years. Even Reznor himself seems slightly bewildered by it: “It wasn’t necessarily what we thought it was going to be when we started,” he explained coyly about the project. While the six-song, 31-minute record is easily the shortest thing to ever pass for a NIN album, it’s hard to deny that it does feel distinct. Its preceding releases, 2016’s Not the Actual Events and last year’s Add Violence, were concise and sporadically thrilling surveys of Reznor’s oeuvre, but Bad Witch stands on its own. Like his greatest albums, it works best as a whole, played loudly on headphones in a dark room. Like his celebrated film scores with bandmate Atticus Ross, it successfully creates an atmosphere and invites us to explore every inch of it. – Pitchfork