How To Destroy Angels

How to Destroy Angels is a collective from Los Angeles composed of Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig, Atticus Ross, and Rob Sheridan. An Omen is their debut EP on Columbia Records and it became available on November 13th digitally and on 12" vinyl. The band's first release was a self-titled EP, released in June 2010.

The band recorded a cover of the Bryan Ferry song "Is Your Love Strong Enough?," which was released in December 2011 on the soundtrack for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

With the release of their first self-titled EP and now with An Omen, How To Destroy Angels have proven to be a much leaner, cleaner-sounding crew than Reznor's other band, Nine Inch Nails. Everything is dark, blue and distorted on this latest album. Even Rob Sheridan's cover art design seems to evoke this feeling. The album sleeve is an image of an outstretched arm, which Sheridan had previously ran through an iPod onto a VCR and then, subsequently, photographed from a CRT monitor. After undergoing such severe processing, the arm now hardly seems able to reach out. It bleeds static. It is collapsing, and it seems to be fenced in and confined.

All of this seems like such a perfect fit for Reznor's usually complex, affecting, and elaborate musical arrangements, and it is. An Omen, too, bleeds static, collapses, and is confined by its own aimlessness, but while Sheridan's design was intended, How To Destroy Angels' was not.

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