Mr. Furious Records

MR|Review directs readers’ limited attention among works via ratings, and within works via prose, focusing on works where our opinion diverges from critical or popular consensus, or we have significant insight that compliments or challenges readers’ aesthetic experience.

It’s hard to imagine a passionate How To Destroy Angels fan. As favorably inclined as I am toward Trent Reznor’s work, there’s just not much I can recommend here; the “How To Destroy Angels” EP resembles nothing so much as “The Fragile” b-sides, albeit with a better signal-to-noise ratio.

On the other hand, the good news is that the creative partnership between Trent and Mariqueen Maandig works at a fundamental level, and has potential for the future. Concept’s solid, it’s the execution that fails here. There’s just not enough cool ideas to work with as in NIN’s better material, and what is here hasn’t been used to maximum effect. The result is slightly noisy chillout music; fine, I guess, but nothing I can get excited about. -h