Mysticism is a state, an experience, where language can’t go

September 7, 2022 1:21 PM

‘They’re Really Close To My Body’: A Hagiography of Nine Inch Nails and their resident mystic Robin Finck

But if this storm was all their performance contained, the band would not be as powerfully purgative as they are. If they began and ended at fury only, the transcendent capacity delivered at a NIN show would stay grounded within the material perimeter of the body, circumscribing how lonely it is to live there, that place, that thing, which is all, in the end, that one has. But it doesn’t stop at this – because NIN has, as its touring guitarist, an actual ecstatic mystic on their stage: Robin Finck.

posted by foxfirefey (14 comments total)

I have not read the entire article yet (its very long!! but beautifully written)

I first heard NIN in 1990 (Pretty Hate Machine) I was 22, just out of college, at a weird moment in my life. it was my soundtrack that summer. NIN is still a regular in my music rotations, especially when one of those moods overtake...nothing else will do.

I CANNOT imagine the effect it would have had on me to hear this music at such a young age. I am sure I would have gotten in lots of trouble...
posted by supermedusa at 1:52 PM on September 7, 2022

i don't recall NIN albums hardly ever having printed lyrics as the author asserts but i dug out my old copy of broken and i was wrong. indeed it does but it'd take a pretty busybody grandma to read that looking for the devil of fuck

my big breakthrough moment with NIN was on a high school trip to NYC from the rural midatlantic, having some really bad things happen in my social sphere, and buying Downward Spiral from some record store and spending the entire rest of the trip stomping around the city in the rain with my CD walkman thing, headphones on, just going over and over and over again. it was basically perfect.
posted by glonous keming at 3:30 PM on September 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

I've sort of been along with NIN for the whole ride, and continue to follow them today. I'm not sure I agree that Finck is necessarily a mystic, but he is a strange creature and he is a definite presence with NIN when they tour.

That was QUITE the article. I'm going to have to digest it for a while. I agree a lot with her about NIN and rage and ecstasy. I'm generally not an angry music sort of person, but this one band really hooks it for me. I think it's because it's essentially pop in structure just with dark instrumentation and approach.

Still not sure what to make of their trio of EPs they released not too long ago. Those feel really difficult to me for some reason.
posted by hippybear at 4:04 PM on September 7, 2022

Oooof. I could see someone bouncing off this piece hard, but I found quite a lot of it disarmingly familiar and some of it borderline rapturous to read and feel seen by.

NIN, the CLOSURE doc, and the ineffability of not just Reznor but also Finck and Lohner in that powerhouse experience would inevitably put my young self in a quasi-religious reverence. Thanks for the post.
posted by churl at 4:06 PM on September 7, 2022

I was always Skinny Puppy first, but forgave Trent for Down in it and PHM. Was devoted to Downward and have been on and off over the years. That said, the Halsey record was a master stroke, and my 8-year old and I love it.

Reading through this, and is great.
posted by grimley at 5:49 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was always Skinny Puppy first, but forgave Trent for Down in it and PHM.

Same!

For me The Fragile was the best NIN album by a mile, with Downward Spiral and the Broken/Fixed EPs also pretty decent. PHM was okay. But honestly I was not into With Teeth or Year Zero and gave up on them completely after that.

These days I have a higher opinion of Alessandro Cortini, Chris Vrenna and Atticus Ross than Reznor himself. Particularly Cortini, I'm a huge fan of his solo ambient work (and the Make Noise Strega).
posted by Foosnark at 7:17 PM on September 7, 2022

This has got to be one of the bloggiest things I've ever read, great stuff! Stating the bleedin' obvious, the author really likes Robin Finck. Bowie is mentioned a couple of times, which made me briefly wonder if they'd been born a couple of decades earlier they'd have been all about Mick Ronson, but by the time I'd finished reading I think they'd have just discovered and embraced Robin Finck the exact same way twenty years later in life. Cheers for sharing!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:34 PM on September 7, 2022

I listened too loud and got too close and know all the words.

Loved this.
posted by zenon at 10:13 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Wonderful read! Thank you! Many poignant memories of angst, fashion and sounds.
posted by erebora at 11:29 PM on September 7, 2022

I worked in a window factory for 15 years where the screech of aluminium being cut was constant. That's probably why I have pretty bad tinnitus today. Though I like to tell myself it was the tape of Downward Spiral that lived in my walkman all through high-school.

Don't turn up your headphones beyond reason, it's not worth it.
posted by adept256 at 12:41 AM on September 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I haven't finished reading it yet but I love this so much that I felt compelled to say thanks for sharing before I forget.

I'm 7 years older than the author and discovered NIN thanks to Closer which just immediately grabbed me as an expression of my messy and complicated late adolescent sexuality. I spent my free time in university computer labs hand-coding a fan site where I posted long screeds trying to make sense of my overwhelming sexual obsession with Trent Reznor. (I never saw past him to the occasional band members so this article is a fascinating perspective for me.) And like the author, as a queer trans kid being able to identify and articulate my rage was very powerful.
posted by hgws at 1:37 AM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fascinating. My wife is a bit of a NIN head and I’ve understood it little, until now.
posted by BlunderingArtist at 3:22 AM on September 8, 2022

So here's the first 7 songs from NIN at Red Rocks a week ago (Sept 3, 2022) [28m14s], and you can see Finck being all the things described in this article.

This is a good tour to see this on, because this tour is the least tech heavy, the most "a band on stage" for NIN in a long long time.
posted by hippybear at 9:08 PM on September 10, 2022

Looks like the band is Robin Finck, Atticus Ross (duh!), Alessandro Cortini, and Ian Rubin.

Moving Cortini to bass is a peculiar choice, but he's been doing it for a while now.

I have a the modwheelmood EPs by Cortini and love love them. And an album by Rubin, The New Regime? It's their first, I don't know if they've done more, but it's pretty good.

I am missing them on this tour, which makes me sad, but I'll keep an eye out for something in the future.
posted by hippybear at 9:22 PM on September 10, 2022