Rank NIN Albums

[GavinCollins420]

1. Year Zero
2. The Downward Spiral
3. With Teeth
4. The Fragile
5. Pretty Hate Machine
6. The Slip
7. Broken
8. Ghosts I-IV

[ryanmcfly]

1. Year Zero
2. The Fragile
3. The Downward Spiral
4.With Teeth
5. Pretty Hate Machine
6. Ghosts
7. The Slip
8. Broken

[Kid Charlemagne]

Broken
With Teeth
The Downward Spiral
The Slip
The Fragile
Pretty Hate Machine
Year Zero
Ghosts


With Teeth is pretty underrated for me. All the songs are accessible, not much filler in my opinion, one of the best comeback albums of all time. Broken though is my shit, fond memories of skating to the album when I was in middle school, and even though it was released before Downward Spiral, I think it holds up much better.

[Collin]

1. The Fragile- pretty easy number one choice. It's like the definitive NIN album, all of the interesting sounds Trent has dabbled in throughout his entire career seem to make an appearance. Pretty impressive beast of a record.
2. With Teeth- underrated masterpiece IMO. So many great tracks, All the Love, TLBTB, BYIT, RWIB. Never understood the hate for this one.
3. The Downward Spiral- deserves its recognition and hype.
4. Pretty Hate Machine- a good pop record.
5. Year Zero- some beats are a tad too similar and samey, but some great tracks here nonetheless.
6. The Slip- I actually really liked The Slip, it just feels a tad unfinished. 1,000,000, Head Down and Lights in The Sky are all essential NIN though.
7. Broken- I do love the heaviness of it, but the brevity of it makes it hard to compare with full-length releases. Plus, I was never the hugest fan of HIS, the outro is overlong.
8. Ghosts I-IV- honestly not a bad album, but certainly his most underwhelming. It probably would have been better if some of the fat had been trimmed from it, but it's a nice album to return to if you're in the mood for it.

[eversonpoe]

what the hell.

(i love all of these so it's really just different degrees of love)
the fragile
the downward spiral
pretty hate machine
ghosts i-iv
broken / with teeth
the slip

(but i honestly barely like this one)
year zero

[neorev]

01. The Downward Spiral
02. With Teeth
03. Broken
04. Not The Actual Events
05. The Fragile
06. Still
07. Pretty Hate Machine
08. Add Violence
09. The Slip
10. Ghosts
11. Hesitation Marks
12. Year Zero

Updated on 9/5/17

[greenhorn1]

Well since I think PHM is one of the greatest albums of all time it's obviously got the top spot.

1. Pretty Hate Machine
2. Broken
3. The Downward Spiral (LOVE further down the spiral too)
4. Ghosts I-IV
5. The Fragile
6. With Teeth
7. Year Zero
8. The Slip

Honestly I just kind of guessed at 7 and 8 because I never really listen to either of them.

[ripedecay]

I've been contemplating this since it has unanimously been determined that HM is in fact that good (i agree). however, i cant put it above the fragile due to it's nice aged effect aka nice memories i have of it built into facets of me. TDS isnt over rated by any stretch but def requires a certain mood level to listen to. WT was def not well received by me at first in spite thinking the art was absolutely amazing, but now is def a really nicely rounded album and has some personal favs. YZ was a blast to be a part of during the ARG on here and feel like it did what it was supposed to. The Slip was a nice treat and is def underrated. Broken is the sound most relate to NIN i feel who dont listen to regularly. PHM is a classic and i dont think sounds very dated when u look at it like YZ it has a unique vibe. Ghosts i feel was just jam sessions and TR finally giving us what we asked for in unreleased material and had some solid gems on it. HM def feels complete although i'd like more instrumental "filler" as it were.


1.The Fragile
2.Hesitation Marks
3.With Teeth
4.The Downward Spiral
5.Year Zero
6.The Slip
7.Broken
8.Pretty Hate Machine
9.Ghost I-IV

[bugas]

Downward Spiral
The Fragile
Hesitation Marks
Pretty Hate Machine
Year Zero
With Teeth
Ghosts I-IV
The Slip (most hated album of all time, i like to think as it as NIN's "st.anger")

[andre78]

I've heard'em all so much that it's kinda like selecting between my kids. But I don't have kids, so this is way harder!!!

1. The Fragile - it just sounds freaking fantastic, never heard anything ( not even from NIN ) that sounded this powerful. Masterpiece from the first time I heard it up until this very moment.
2.The Downward Spiral - absolute classic, one of the very few albums that I cannot listen if it's not from start to finish.
3.Broken - this is what metal should be like. When I heard it for the first time I realized how most metal I knew was silly.
4.With Teeth - really, really great songs scattered all through the record. And best vocal performance from Trent ever.
5.Pretty Hate Machine - my very first contact with NIN. Some stuff in it just don't make it to me anymore ( even when it was re-released ), but it brings awesome memories.
6.The Slip - not that fond of the instrumental stuff and the whole album lacks some sequencing for me.
7.Year Zero - those big beats are tiresome most of the times. But can't ignore a record that contains something as beautiful as "In This Twilight".
8.Still - love how the songs are reimagined.
10.Ghosts I-IV - as commented in The Slip line, I'm not that fond of instrumentals. I tried but could never heard from start to finish, like all the other albums.

[Senateguard33]

1. The Fragile-Not only is this album epic, but it contains an example of all the different musical styles of NIN, making it the one album that can give any listener the true definition of NIN's sound.
2. The Downward Spiral-Not much to say that hasn't been said already. I think the Fragile and this album tie as NIN's masterpiece.
3. Pretty Hate Machine-This was my favorite up until the Fragile was released. I've always been big on electronic music and the 80s sound. I probably play this one the most out of the entire catalog.
4. Ghosts I-IV-I always wished for NIN to do soundtracks and this was sort of the first taste of that. The Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (two of Trent's best work IMO) evolved from this stuff.
5. Year Zero-A really cool concept and some great songs. It does get a bit draggy, but it is a very unique album.
5. With Teeth-This sort of sounds like a "cliff notes" version of the Fragile, or even a more radio friendly version. It doesn't offer anything new to the catalog, but does contain some of his best songs.
6. Broken-I like metal, but I'm not a huge fan. While this album is awesome, I prefer more diversity in an album, I suppose that is why it is shorter than the others.
7. The Slip-Very enjoyable, but like With Teeth before it, it doesn't offer anything new to the table. It has a lot of good stuff, but it sounds more like a collection of outtakes from Ghosts, Year Zero and With Teeth.

I don't consider Still to be an actual album, as it contains re-workings and material meant for the movie "One Hour Photo".

[Dragonkaos]

In this moment because change frequently...

1-The Fragile
2-Ghost I-IV
3-Broken
4-Prety Hate Machine
5-With Teeth
6-Year Zero
7-The Downward Spiral
8-The Slip

[Henrie_Schnee]

-The Downward Spiral [my entry ticket, after all these years still things to discover]
-With Teeth [the first nin-album whose launch I've withnessed, still in love with the design]
-The Fragile [arguably the best one, but not my favorite]
-Broken/Fixed [what is there to say?]
-Year Zero [pretty much still love it & and it's world, but not in as heavy rotation anymore than it's brethren]
-Pretty Hate Machine [granted, it has top songs, but overall it was always the hardest one for me to love]
-The Slip/Ghosts I-IV [tie for the last, but still awesome records in itself]

[Bowie]

1. The Downward Spiral
2. Year Zero
3. Pretty Hate Machine
4. The Fragile
5. With Teeth
6. Broken
7. The Slip
8. Ghosts I-IV

Didn't put much thought into. Simply tried to gauge how I react to each album when listening. Perhaps With Teeth should be higher. I'll justify my picks better when I have the time.

[henryeatscereal]

*EDIT* After hearing "Hesitation Marks" i think it goes:


1. The Downward Spiral - No words can do justice to this masterpiece!

2. The Fragile - In my opinion his best MUSICAL effort yet it has some filler (very little thankfully!)

3. Broken - Could have been the best NIN album if it were longer...

4. With Teeth - I think Trent resumes all his tricks in this album, straightforward and to the point!

5. Hesitation Marks - Liked!!!

6. Pretty Hate Machine - A bit dated, yet awesome in detail, this album shows that Trent had amazing ideas from the start, he just needed to polish his "act"

7. Year Zero - Awesome production values, yet it has filler, most of the songs are good not great

8. Ghosts I-IV - An ambitious effort and a very good album, yet it think it's hard to listen to it as a complete album...

9. The Slip - I like it, but it's my least favorite

[Toadflax]

In honor of he Hesitation Marks leak, I wanted to finally contribute to this thread...

This is very tricky, since I have such a childhood nostalgia attached to the pre-With Teeth albums. I have no idea how I'd feel if I heard them all at once. That said:


1. The Fragile - Two discs, layers, soundscapes. At the time, it felt like getting an extended edition of The Downward Spiral. Seeing The Great Below live was an incredible catharsis for me.

2. The Downward Spiral - The classic. I used to have this in my Walkman on repeat. My band in high school covered Hurt and March Of The Pigs.

3. Pretty Hate Machine - One of the first albums I owned. Eleven years old. I still love every song.

4. Hesitation Marks - After five or six listens, I'm pretty positive this is my favorite post-Fragile album. No idea how I'll feel about it as years go by, but I'm guessing it'll be somewhere around this spot (decent chance this would go above PHM without nostalgia bias).

5. Broken - A devastating staple of my middle school years. This album felt like the only person who understood me when I wanted to run away from home. If The Fragile gets brownie points just for there being so much more of it, Broken loses them for being an EP (just in terms of ranking, not in terms of how I feel about it as its own entity).

(Ghosts I-IV - I love Ghosts, but it's hard to rank it against the others due to its instrumental nature. It's more of an opus/symphony/soundtrack to me than an album.)

6. Year Zero - The Beginning Of The End and Capital G aside, I love almost every song on this album. The ARG was amazing, and hearing In This Twilight in the context of the story I had been following made me lose my shit.

7. With Teeth - I have a lot of nostalgia connected with this one, too, since I was still impressionable in my early twenties and it was the first thing after the hiatus, but I feel many of the songs are just kind of paint-by-numbers. I hate the rap-singing at the end of The Hand That Feeds.

8. The Slip - Nothing against this album either, but, like With Teeth, I just feel most of the songs are fairly lackluster. 1,000,000, Letting You, and Head Down sound like a 40 something trying to be a hard rocker. As much as I like the tracks (particularly the latter), the Corona Radiata / Four Of Us Are Dying interlude also feels out of place on such a short album.


So there it is. If anyone reading will indulge a little Hesitation Marks pontificating from me, I feel like With Teeth, Year Zero, and The Slip had so many brilliant moments, most of which were more electronic or mellow than rock-based (All The Love In The World, Sunspots, Right Where It Belongs, Me, I'm Not, My Violent Heart, The Good Soldier, The Warning, Vessel, In This Twilight, Demon Seed- Echoplex and Discipline to lesser extent). My biggest problem was those albums also had songs, most of which I mentioned above, that were very songwriting 101 that sounded like someone whose heart wasn't in hard rock anymore trying to keep up that persona (I believe the lyrics of Discipline are about this struggle). However you feel about Hesitation Marks, it absolutely sounds to me like someone who is fully realizing the music inside of him rather than trying to satisfy an expectation, whether from himself or others. Came Back Haunted had me worried, for instance. I like the song a lot, but it felt a little like it was just the new Hand That Feeds, rather than something like Copy Of A, which sounded like nothing i had ever heard before.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above. I love looking at this career as a complete arc and the cause and effect of it all.

[brokenfragility]

1. The Downward Spiral
2. Hesitation Marks
3. Year Zero
4. The Fragile
5. Ghosts I-IV
6. Broken
7. Pretty Hate Machine
8. With Teeth
9. The Slip

If I was allowed The Social Network soundtrack it would have been near the top. 2nd or 3rd probably.

[Reaps]

1. The Fragile
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. With Teeth
5. Year Zero
6. Broken
7. Pretty Hate Machine
8. Ghosts I-IV
9. The Slip

[spitefulscorpio]

Pretty Hate Machine (Probably because this is the first NIN album I listened to so it holds a special place in my heart.)
The Downward Spiral
Hesitation Marks
The Fragile
Broken
With Teeth
Year Zero
Ghosts I-IV
The Slip

I guess I am in the minority with PHM!

[Dryalex12]

1. Still
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. The Fragile/Year Zero
5. Ghost
6. PHM
7. Slip
8. With Teeth
9. Broken


but to be honest I love them all the same

[rmxdave]

Hi guys. Decided to resurrect my account from the ETS graveyard because I've been putting some thought into my own rankings lately.

1. The Fragile
2. Pretty Hate Machine
3. The Downward Spiral
4. Hesitation Marks
5. Broken
6. With Teeth
7. The Slip
8. Year Zero
9. Ghosts I-IV

If Still was allowed, I'd probably put it at #2 because AATCHB and Leaving Hope are that good. Also, HM could move up or down over time. I know when YZ first came out, I would have put it near the top of the list, but it just did not hold up well for me.

[Mark Fraser]

Obviously this list could easily, easily change as it will take a couple of months to fully decide where HM stands. However, as of now:

9) The Slip
8) Ghosts
7) With Teeth
6) Hesitation Marks
5) Year Zero
4) The Fragile
3) Broken
2) Pretty Hate Machine
1) The Downward Spiral

[ChasingTheGhost]

1. The Fragile
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. Broken
5. Pretty Hate Machine
6. With Teeth
7. Year Zero
8. The Slip
9. Ghost

[fabripav]

1. The Downward Spiral
2. The Fragile
3. Hesitation Marks
4. Ghosts I-IV
5. Broken
6. The Slip
7. Year Zero
8. Pretty Hate Machine
9. With Teeth

[greyskies13]

Well if we are including things like the soundtracks, i'm going to include remix and live albums since they were released under the actual NIN name. So my order goes like this:

1. The Downward Spiral
2. The Fragile
3. Year Zero
4. Broken
5. Year Zero Remixed
6. With Teeth
7. Still
8. Pretty Hate Machine
9. Ghosts I-IV
10. The Slip
11. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
12. And All That Could Have Been
13. Further Down The Spiral
14. The Social Network
15. Things Falling Apart
16. Fixed

right now Hesitation Marks is coming in somewhere between Still and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

[Amaro]

The thing about Still is that it contains past original songs (you all knew that right? NIN fans), so...kinda...you know.

But if you say fuck it... (in which case I'll say it with you)

The Fragile > The Downward Spiral
Hesitation Marks > With Teeth > Broken
Pretty Hate Machine > Still > The Slip
Ghosts I-IV > Year Zero

(Keeping it straight NIN.)

These are my updated preferences.

[Inkë]

1. The Downward Spiral
2. Pretty Hate Machine
3. Broken
4. Year Zero (tie)
4. The Fragile (tie)
6. The Slip
7. With Teeth
8. Ghosts I-IV

[chroipahtz]

1. The Fragile
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. Year Zero
5. With Teeth
6. The Slip
7. Pretty Hate Machine
8. Broken
9. Ghosts I-IV

[dregs]

1. The Fragile
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. Broken
5. PHM
6. Still
7. Ghosts
8. Year Zero
9. With Teeth
10. The Slip

[kejar31]

1. The Fragile
2. The Downward Spiral
3. Hesitation Marks
4. Broken
5. PHM
6. Still
7. Ghosts
8. Year Zero
9. With Teeth
10. The Slip

Me and this guy/girl think exactly the same