Taking Sides; Nine Inchs Nails vs. Smashing Pumpkins -- who has aged better?

xpost: wasn't it "Sin" maybe?

The only Pumpkins record that seemed as amazing at the time it came out was Siamese Dream.

I'll still listen to either and get something good out of it, but I think Pretty Hate Machine has aged better.

So, NIN.

What do you mean, they're both great still. That said, I haven't listened to either in a bit, but that'll just mean that when I do come back I'll be all the more pleased. Currently waiting with interest on the new NIN as well as the DVD of the final Pumpkins gig.

Mellon Collie was and remains a more essential album to my ears, brain and heart than NIN's work in general but the sense of sheer anticipation building up to the release of The Downward Spiral was near indescribable among my circle.

I like the bridge to 1979 the most bcuz it gets all densely layered and you get all nostalgic for the teenage-dom you never actually experienced in teh video.

A spot-on take.

"Anyway, your CD has just come out (I thought CDs'n'Such at the mall would start selling them at midnight like they did with the Limp Bizkit album, but they're such retards there), and once again you are pioneering the marriage of heavy guitars, moody atmospherics, electronic drones and beats, and aggressive singing. Just like Killing Joke 20 years ago. Weren't they great! I just know that your albums will sound as fresh and exciting someday as their 1980 debut does now. (I know you'll think I'm queer, but Youth their bass player produced one of my fave Bananarama singles, "Long Train Runnin' "—a Doobie Bros. cover!) Just imagine what they could have come up with if they'd had a ton of money and two years in the studio. Back then, they made records in like two days."

(If Geir were here he'd probably say: "Nine Inch Nails!? NOT MELODIC ENOUGH!")

Have you tried actually listening to NIN since 1990? What a painfully stupid thing to say.

The NIN of "Heresy" and "Head Like a Hole" has been copied endlessly (which makes those tracks sound more dated), but the NIN of "Hurt" and "A Warm Place" has not. Essentially, NIN tracks that rely more on guitars have not dated as well.

The Downward Spiral changed my life at 14, as corny (and possibly pathetic) as that sounds. NIN made me interested in electronic and noisy textures in music, plus Further Down the Spiral introduced me to Aphex Twin!

TDS still sounds really good and fresh to me. For an album that sold like 2 or 3 million copies it has some pretty harsh and uncompromiing textures on it.

The Pumpkins, another defining band of my adolescence, for me don't hold up as well. I still love Siamese Dream. I like a lot of individual songs from their other albums. But...I guess i just lost interest.

Anyway, for me NIN has aged better, sonically at least. Though neither Corgan or Reznor are good lyricists, to say the least.

I more or less agree with everything latebloomer has to say.

I don't care much for Pretty Hate Machine and Broken, to be honest. And the Smashing Pumpkins are below my radar. On so many levels.

I can't decide which is worse. If I were forced to listen to either, suicide would sound like a viable concept.

Prompted by the revival of my Broken praise-thread, I listend to the entirety of that e.p. and half of The Downward Spiral today while boppin' around town, and once again -- the production is amazing. Does Trent lose his way in the lyrics department? From time to time, but it ain't all bad. Then, on VH1 Classic, they played two `Pumpkins tracks ("Disarm" and...ummm...something else) and it just sounded so dated and -- sorry, Ned -- flat. The one `Pumpkins record I'd hold onto is Gish, but while watching those videos, I couldn't help but think how thin it all sounded.

I'd take it a step further and suggest that while Reznor is singularly preoccupied lyrically and conceptually with his own anguish, he's a more inventive and capable musician than Corgan. I don't mean that in a Rick Wakeman-styled virtuoso way, I just mean he has a better way with a tune (and a better sense of how to realize it in the studio), where Corgan's music just sounds so messy to me all these years later.

And hats off to Scott for truly honoring the fire.

I more hear scope in their music, a song like "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" -- and oh god do I love that title -- operates in a space both wide and high, if that makes any sense. It's huge sounding.

"Disarm" was a piece of shit even when it was current, and it only got worse when it was played every 5th song on the radio. As much as I think Siamese Dream is a great record, my skip-button-pushing finger itches like crazy when that track comes 'round.

On the other hand I could listen to "Quiet" on repeat for hours.

smashing pumpkins joins pearl jam in sheer carelessness
(laziness?) with regards to design. such lackluster
cover art and fontography! for shame!

I think that covers for Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie, and Adore are pretty strong and memorable, actually.

When I was 8 nobody bought fucken tapes. I suspect it was the same for Alex...

LP's were the name of the game, and the first two were Dressed to Kill by Kiss and A Night at the Opera by Queen....and I still listen to both of them today.

I'm assuming that means "fun" = "danceable songs, singable lyrics", not "fun" = "happy happy joy joy".

Custos = teh WINNER!!!!!!1

I still think NIN has aged better on the superness of Pretty Hate Machine alone, but yeah... right on.

I think Marilyn Manson stands up better than either of them, which seems quite a surprise now. "The Beautiful People" is danceable, and the whole of Mechanical Animals is nearly excellent. And some of the earliest material is campy fun.

If you had gotten that album right after a nasty romantic breakup, it becomes an album full of "lets fuck shit up" catharsis.
I'm with you on that one. It's still the best "fuck all you assholes, I've been dumped" album in my collection.

The instrumentals on 'The Fragile' I liked more than most of the tunes. "Just Like You Imagined" would make a great soundtrack piece to a action scene in a James Cameron movie. I liked that song so much I picked up this album out of a used bin, which made it the first NIN album I ever owned. I always had roommates that had their records for most of the 90s.

I think both have held up somewhat well, especially the best of either group.

I think here are a more current bands that sound like Alice In Chains, Radiohead or Tool than either NIN or the Pumpkins these days. That says something I suppose, whether good or bad I don't know. Sounding like NIN or Corgan is still perferable to those Pearl Jam clones that were foised upon the radio for a few years. Hum sounded a bit like the Smashing Pumpkins, but they were a pretty good, which is more than you can say for any of those Pearl Jam clones.

I'm pretty sure the reason I liked this song so much when it was first released was because it sounded like the title track to Thurston Moore's Psychic Hearts, which came out earlier in the year and I loved. Ever since then I'd been under the impression that "1979" was a pretty good song (I liked gish, and rushed to the store the day Siamese Dream came out, and hated it, so I'd given up on SP by the time the double CD was released), but I caught it on the radio a few months back, and it wasn't very good at all. As sorta mentioned earlier in the thread, it's the nostalgia for teenage years in the video that makes the song seem great.

I don't remember the last time I listened to NIN, but I would listen to them before I'd listen to SP. That said, I find the responses in this thread with the love of PHM interesting, because that album actually seemed really dated by the time TDS came out, and I can't imagine it not being moreso 11 years later.

Actually I never liked either very much. I think the Broken EP is OK. Siamese Dream had some fairly memorable songs, but my full enjoyment was always hampered by Corgan's voice, absolutely one of the worst I've ever heard, halfway between like a coke-addled James Hetfield and smacked-but Darby Crash, but with even less range than either.