Ranked: The Albums of Nine Inch Nails

Two new albums are peaks in a late-career renaissance

The last time I wrote a series of “Ranked: The Albums of…” stories, Wire, Pet Shop Boys, and Eminem had just released new albums. This has been another big week with albums by stalwarts Pearl Jam, The Necks, Nine Inch Nails and 5 Seconds of Summer. (Just jokes about 5SOS, although they did release an album this week. And technically, The Necks album was released on 3 February but only became streamable this week.) All have been influential in their own spheres and are well into their careers.

NIN’s first album was released in 1989. Trent Reznor has been the sole official member and creative director of the band until the inclusion of Atticus Ross in 2016.

This week’s releases are the sixteenth and seventeenth albums of NIN’s career — Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts. Stylistically these albums are ambient music. They are closer to Brian Eno’s ambient excursions than they are to NIN’s early post-industrial, song-oriented albums.