Short and screech:
Nine Inch Nails conclude their experimental trilogy that began with EPs Not The Actual Events in 2016 and ADD VIOLENCE in 2017 with what Trent Reznor insists is a full-length album, but at a svelte 6 tracks and 30 minutes in length is really somewhere in between.
Nevertheless not a second is wasted in this pulsating handful of brooding soundscapes. Even after thirty years in the business, Reznor maintains his place at the cutting edge. Bad Witch features tracks as weird and atonal as Ahead of Ourselves, which sounds like dance music as imagined by a Dalek, and Play the Goddamned Part, which combines a nightmarish bass riff with, of all things, jazz saxophone.
Like everything NIN produces, Bad Witch is packed with confrontational and not entirely pleasant music, but makes for compelling, if uneasy, listening.
This review first appeared in the Belfast Telegraph
James JW Robinson 