I saw the thread comparing Reznor in '96 to Reznor in '06. Obviously he's been hitting the weights and I assume kicked the drugs etc. I looked around youtube and found some footage of NIN at a KROQ concert back in may 2006.
He's wearing a black t-shirt and jeans and his head is shaved and playing the keyboard on Hurt. He looked like a football player really. I was thinking if his new look would hurt him in the bigger scheme of things, not that it should. I thought back to the mid 90's and that look he had. He came off as "artistic" or at the very least I watched him in a way that I thought he was really an artist and lived the life etc. Now I see him in concert and he's jacked up and it just doesn't have the same feel as before. Maybe I'm imagining it. I just think that he'll lose some "cred" from fans. What do you think?
I consider myself a relatively big NIN fan, and like the progressions that trent has gone through primarily because it makes it likely that he will be around and making music for a long time to come...you can only live on the edge for so long, but also because the different albums make have various musical messages (as skittles talks about)...I think most NIN fans have the days where they can identify with each album.
If every album sounded as close to destruction as The Downward Spiral and trent's heroin chic look continued for too long, the message would get tired and seem contrived (as I said, you can't live that low forever).