NIN's The Fragile -- any good?

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Here's a question to NIN fans out there: is The Fragile any good? I've been considering getting it, but I've been hearing some negative feedback about it.

Thus far, I have gotten The Downward Spiral, With Teeth, and Pretty Hate Machine (which sucked IMO- only 3 good songs on that album). Which of these albums would you say The Fragile sounds most like?

[jpk]

Pretty Hate Machine bad? Heresy! :evilangry

Thr Fragile - interesting mix. It's a double album and pretty eclectic. Some of it's hard and some of it is inrospective. If you like Spiral you should like this, too. My favorite tracks (cruise over to itunes to listen):

Somewhat Damaged
Wretched, The
We're In This Together
No, You Don't

[Chiasm]

I love NIN but The Fragile is probably their worst album in my opinion. Its still pretty good but nowhere near as good as the excellence of Pretty Hate Machine or Broken (their two best IMO).

[pennywisdom]

The best NIN albums were The Downward Spiral or Pretty Hate Machine.

Having said that The Fragile is severely under-rated. I recommend it, despite many people not liking it.

[clayholio]

I enjoyed The Fragile a lot. It's not really a concise album, but I liked it. I like With Teeth a lot more than The Fragile, tho. I also don't care that much for Pretty Hate Machine. It sounds really, really dated.

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Yeah, my only real beef with Pretty Hate Machine is how dated most of it sounds (though Head Like A Hole, Terrible Lie and Sin are excellent tracks)

[CaptMagellan]

"Fragile" isn't as 'listenable' as the other albums but it's good. Reznor might have fallen into the "music for musicians" trap though. I know a couple friends who are professional composers (who don't like Industrial or NIN in general) who think it's musically brilliant. Almost every other casual fan that I know just doesn't like to listen to it.

I fall more into the latter category. I recognize that it's very well written and made, but there are plenty of other things I'd rather listen to.

[G. Wayne]

"Fragile" isn't as 'listenable' as the other albums but it's good. Reznor might have fallen into the "music for musicians" trap though. I know a couple friends who are professional composers (who don't like Industrial or NIN in general) who think it's musically brilliant. Almost every other casual fan that I know just doesn't like to listen to it. ...

IMO, after the ungodly and unpredictable success of Closer, I think Reznor intentionally made the Fragile so "unlistenable". The reasons why are debatable, but my hopeful guess is that it was something of an F.U. to all the casual and bandwagon fans.

Anyway, my ranking of NIN releases, in order of most to least favorite

Broken
The Downward Spiral
The Fragile
Pretty Hate Machine
With Teeth.

There's a lot of good stuff on the Fragile, though it's one of the albums that I never got around to knowing most of the song names. It could easily be split into a good album, and a lot of ...eh...

[mr sinister]

Yeah, my only real beef with Pretty Hate Machine is how dated most of it sounds (though Head Like A Hole, Terrible Lie and Sin are excellent tracks)
i would hope it sounds a little dated, it's basically reached the age of consent in most states. i'm giving you a little crap but it's all in good fun. really though when i was 16 growing up to this album it was unbelievable.

[Jade69/Legolaslady]

Pretty Hate Machine is one of my favorite CDs of all time, not to mention my favorite NIN CD ever.
I'm pretty sure I had the Fragile at one point or another but I don't know what happened to it. I can't really remember any of the tracks on it off the top of my head, so... in short it wasn't all that memorable in my opinion.

[Punisher]

I'm a huge NIN fan and The Fragile is my favorite album of all time. You should pick it up this second! I think it's perfect. To compare it to another cd of Trent's I'd say it sounds most like With Teeth. I love every track on it and can't choose a favorite.
To answer your question no the cd's not good it's excellent.

[Chiasm]

Pretty Hate Machine will always be a classic album and never gets old. Thats because its the perfect CD to listen to after a bad breakup. Between in and the followup, Broken, its obvious that Trent had a lot of relationship issues in his life.

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Again, the only real reason I like Pretty Hate Machine less is simply because it sounds so dated and . . . well, 80's-ish at some points. Not that I'm denying it's still a fairly good album ("Head Like A Hole," "Sin" and "Terrible Lie" are awesome songs), but the rest of it doesn't really impress me (and besides which, I was sort of turned off by Reznor's attempt to rap in "Down in It")