The last twelve months was a good year for Nine Inch Nails fans and collectors. The critically acclaimed Year Zero came out last April, Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise And Fall Of Niggy Tardust was released in November–Trent Reznor’s biggest production work since Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar–(and nobody had to pay for it), 36 decent instrumentals were released last month in the Ghosts I-IV anthology, and, as of yesterday, we get yet another new Nine Inch Nails record: The Slip.

Unless you hate Nine Inch Nails, there really is no reason to not go to www.nin.com right now and download the album. It’s absolutely free. “This one’s on me,” it says on his blog. What a nice guy. I guess he chucked the option of offering the artists five bucks like he did with Saul Williams’ record because there was an embarrassing amount of honest fans.

You get more than you pay for, but The Slip is no masterpiece. It definitely sounds like a rushed album and Trent Reznor hardly breaks new ground. The lyrics are frustratingly self-focused and cliché in a Nine Inch Nails sort of way, “Once I start I cannot stop myself” in “Discipline” echoes, “I just made you up to hurt myself” in “Only”. This is a disappointing touch after Year Zero’s lyrics painted a startlingly creative potential dark future of America. Much of the songs have little to no vocal melody or rhythm. The struggle for proper composition shines in “Lights In The Sky,” perhaps the worst Nine Inch Nails song ever released, and in the final song “Demon Seed,” which has such an ugly choice for delivering the vocals, it would have worked much better as an instrumental. Maybe if the two songs before it weren’t instrumentals, “Demon Seed” would have been.

Speaking of instrumentals, three of then ten on this album are instrumentals. Maybe Trent Reznor really is in the mood for instrumentals after just releasing thirty-six of them last month. The two instrumentals at the end of the CD really are finer parts of the album, however.

Much of The Slip is comparable to the song “Only” beyond lyrics and vocals. The drums are heavily programmed and looped; blending 80’s rock with keyboard preset beats (The better keyboard preset beats, at least). The distortion gain is often at full blast, echoing Year Zero a little more. With that said, it sounds like this album is from an era stuck between With Teeth and Year Zero, and the instrumentals borrowed from Ghosts.

The Slip isn’t a terrible album. Perhaps I’ve been too harsh in this review. The songs are at least catchy and the production is at least solid. And besides, nobody was expecting this album to come out; no anticipations were harmed. What is obviously lacking from it is time, with so many projects obviously on Trent Reznor’s hands lately and the lyrical craftsmanship on here a bit lacking. It’s a full-length album that satisfies like an EP would.