With Teeth (halo)

Halo 19: With Teeth

DualDisc/Limited Tour Edition artwork

With Teeth (also known as Halo 19 or [WITH_TEETH]) is the fifth full-length studio album by Nine Inch Nails, released on May 3, 2005. It spawned three singles (The Hand That Feeds, Only and Every Day Is Exactly The Same), four tour legs, and much celebration for Trent Reznor's sobriety.

Track List

CD - US/Canada

1. "All The Love In The World" – 5:14
2. "You Know What You Are?" – 3:41
3. "The Collector" – 3:07
4. "The Hand That Feeds" – 3:31
5. "Love Is Not Enough" – 3:41
6. "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" – 4:54
7. "With Teeth" – 5:37
8. "Only" – 4:22
9. "Getting Smaller" – 3:35
10. "Sunspots" – 4:02
11. "The Line Begins To Blur" – 3:44
12. "Beside You In Time" – 5:24
13. "Right Where It Belongs" – 5:04

CD - Non-US/Canada

Countries outside the US and Canada had "Home" as an additional CD album track.

14. "Home" - 3:14

CD - UK

The UK (and Japan) CD added an additional bonus track: an alternate version of "Right Where It Belongs".

15. "Right Where It Belongs V2" - 5:04

CD - Japan

The Japan CD also added the Ruff remix as yet another bonus track.

16. "The Hand That Feeds" (Ruff Mix) - 3:57

12" Vinyl

     A1  "All The Love In The World" - 5:15
     A2  "You Know What You Are?" - 3:42
     A3  "The Collector" - 3:07
     A4  "The Hand That Feeds" - 3:32

     B1  "Love Is Not Enough" - 3:41
     B2  "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" - 4:55
     B3  "With Teeth" - 5:38

     C1  "Only" - 4:23
     C2  "Getting Smaller" - 3:35
     C3  "Sunspots" - 4:03
     C4  "Home" - 3:12

     D1  "The Line Begins To Blur" - 3:44
     D2  "Beside You In Time" - 5:25
     D3  "Right Where It Belongs" - 5:07

Cassette

The cassette version was only released in a few international countries where cassettes were still popular. It has the CD run order, with "Home" as the last track, and splits the sides between "With Teeth" and "Only". This was the final NIN release to be officially issued on cassette.

Limited Tour Edition & DualDisc

In the US, a DualDisc version of With Teeth was released in a digipak. A version referred to as the 'Limited Tour Edition' was released in the UK and Japan, with the CD and DVD as separate discs. It came in a two-disc jewel case and had the same cover art as the DualDisc.

DualDisc CD side/Limited Tour Edition CD includes:

• With Teeth CD audio
• Includes Track 14 "Home" on the Limited Tour Edition

DualDisc DVD side/Limited Tour Edition DVD includes:

• Entire album in high resolution stereo and 5.1 surround with image slideshow on DVD-Audio players
• Entire album in Dolby Digital stereo and 5.1 surround on standard DVD players
• Music video: "The Hand That Feeds" in Dolby Digital stereo and 5.1 surround
• "Body of Work" section with selected audio and video clips from NIN’s catalog (same as appears on Collected)

Outtakes and demos

Digital Poster (Preview)

Unfinished With Teeth CD-R front cover

Unfinished With Teeth CD-R back cover

According to an interview with Remix Magazine, 25 songs were written for With Teeth.[1] The non-album tracks from this era are "Non-Entity" and "Not So Pretty Now." During a chat with fans in The Spiral, Reznor stated that these songs were outtakes from the With Teeth sessions, and studio recordings of them might one day surface. On March 20, 2009, Reznor released the long-awaited studio versions as part of the NINJA 2009 Summer Tour EP via ninja2009.com.

On a PDF poster (containing lyrics and credits) posted to the With Teeth site and later made physically available to members of The Spiral as part of the welcome package, several extra songs were alluded to but not featured on the album. All of these songs contained lyrics in some form, though they were not entirely legible. These songs are: "Message To No One", "The Warning", and "The Life You Didn't Lead". On May 5, 2005, in the Access section of nin.com, a fan submitted the question: "In the .pdf file for the lyrics to the With Teeth album, there are [sic] appears to be songs listed with lyrics that do not appear on the DualDisc CD/DVD album. Those songs include "Home," "Message To No One" and "The Life You Didn't Lead". Will these songs be released ever?" Reznor simply replied with "?"

A song with the title "The Warning" is on Year Zero. When the 2019 Definitive Edition vinyl of With Teeth was released, the aforementioned poster was re-created as part of the packaging. Lyrics to "The Warning" were made legible and it was finally revealed that the track from Year Zero has its origins in the track from the With Teeth sessions.

In a late 2003 pre-release article from Alternative Press [2] a song named "My Dead Friend" was mentioned. Whether this is an earlier name for a song that does appear (such as "Beside You In Time") or simply didn't make the cut, is so far unknown. It is speculated that it may have become "This Isn't The Place". Similarly, there is a possibility that "The Life You Didn't Lead" informed or inspired "The Lovers".

Possible pre-release CDs

In January 2020, two separate CDs surfaced that purported to contain songs from With Teeth in various states of completion, as well as outtakes that had not previously been mentioned.

The first CD was labeled With Teeth Selections on the front cover and had five tracks that were all released on the final album in some form. With Teeth Tentative Sequence 12.23.04 is printed on the spine, but this may be a mistake caused by re-using the artwork, as this release is more of a sampler and does not contain the full sequence of the album. This CD was sold on eBay by Amoeba Music. [3][4] The tracklisting correlates with pre-release info reported by Kerrang! magazine [5], including "Getting Smaller" and "Right Where It Belongs" having the working titles of "Getting Smaller Every Day" and "Cages", suggesting that they may have had a copy of this CD.

In the wake of the first CD's auction being discussed on a NIN collecting Facebook group, a collector posted photos of his similar-looking double CD labeled With Teeth Unfinished 11.30.04. [6] [7] This collector had previously posted a photo of his full NIN collection in 2018, with this CD appearing in it. The first disc contains all of the album tracks (some possibly finished, some labeled as demos) in what ended up being the final album running order. The second disc contains outtakes and demos, including previously unknown outtakes named "Cover It Up", "Good Day", and "The End". "Cover It Up" was claimed by the CD's owner to be an early version of "The Idea Of You".

Tracks claiming to be from the five-track CD were posted to archive.org the same month as the eBay sale, but were found to be elaborate fakes. Neither release has actually been shared on the Internet, to date.

Both CDs were brought to the attention of Rob Sheridan, who stated on Twitter that the five-track CD "appears to be one of the ones I made (printing out on a home printer on cut-out CD insert template paper) that we sent out to record industry people and potential collaborators." [8] He also commented on the veracity of the double CD. [9] When asked on a subscriber-only Patreon Q&A about the "new" outtakes on the double CD, he stated, "I should probably not comment any further on that one, it's really not my place to talk about unreleased NIN stuff."[10]

History

Bleedthrough album art

Bleedthrough

The initial concept of the album was an exploration of "loss and possible discovery of self, along with alternate layers of reality and perception set inside a nightmare you can't seem to wake up from; with lots of feedback." Around this time mysterious quotes and binary codes appeared on the NIN website, including a passage from the book The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, containing the phrase "bleed-through". The working title for With Teeth was Bleedthrough, referencing the phenomenon of audio bleed-through. Pre-production and initial recording began in 2003.

In a question posted in the Access section of nin.com, Reznor announced that the working title Bleedthrough had been dropped. Reznor stated that the name was changed because "it was supposed to be about different layers of reality seeping into the next, but I think some people were thinking about blood or a tampon commercial." "'Bleedthrough' is no more," Reznor wrote in a message posted on nin.com, "as the songs and concepts matured, the focus and theme of the album shifted somewhat--leaving me feeling that title was inappropriate. Or you could just say I changed my mind. Yes, the new album has a title and track list, and no I'm not telling you what it is yet."

With Teeth

Reznor commented on the change of direction for the album, stating that "About five or six songs into writing it, the songs started to sound good on their own and they didn't need this framework to work together," and that With Teeth consists of "a collection of songs that are friends with each other, but don't have to rely on each other to make sense", however, the album's narrative arc describes "a difficult journey that begins with a nightmare and ends with acceptance of a new reality."[11]

In an interview in February 2004 Reznor stated that the new material was "more song-oriented (than The Fragile). It's much more lean. It's going to be twelve good punches in the face -- no fillers, no instrumentals, just straight to the point…It's a complicated concept record, but reduced to just simple songs. It's not epic in its scope. It's minimal and a bit brutal." The album's final title may be a reference to a song of the same name by The Melvins, as Reznor is a fan.

In a 2024 post on his Instagram profile[12], Rob Sheridan elaborated on the evolution of the material:

Whenever this work comes around again, people always ask me about the "Bleedthrough" album, how different it was from "With Teeth," etc and I think there’s this fan mythos that some entirely different album was scrapped and sits in a vault somewhere, but that’s not the case. Bleedthrough was just in-progress With Teeth demos, and what changed wasn’t the entire album, it was the new material that was added as recording moved from New Orleans to LA, how that affected the way older demos were completed, how the tracklist evolved, how perspectives shifted. Sometimes concepts change as inspiration changes, and the names and visuals you’ve been sitting with for almost a year don’t feel right anymore. If anything, what you saw at that time was a rare window into the creative process of how an album evolves, not the scrapping of a bunch of material to start from scratch. And the artwork, as well, evolved pretty organically from this into the "With Teeth" artwork.

Recording

According to a statement on nin.com, Reznor stated that producer Rick Rubin was Reznor's "mentor" and "source of inspiration" throughout the planning and writing process of the album. Reznor was also heavily inspired by the use of more analog electronic effects and instruments, specifically tape delay and modular synthesizers, stating that "computers, among other things, are ruining music these days. I hate the Pro Tooled sound of perfection and everything being 'fixed.' This record is most definitely 'un-fixed." During the recording of the album, some of the bands and artists that Reznor listened to were Iggy Pop, The Stooges, Gang Of Four, Public Image Ltd., Pere Ubu, Wire, and Brainiac.[13][14][15]

In an interview with Remix Magazine, Reznor spoke about his new approach to recording:

I wasn't doing anything consciously to react to what I thought sucked around me. And I didn’t do this record to be the opposite of The Fragile, although it kind of came out that way. It just seemed fresh to me. It seemed inspiring. And the records I found myself listening to while doing this record—like old Gang of Four records, Stooges, Iggy Pop—felt fresh, felt dangerous, felt underproduced. It felt like the spirit of a human being conveying an emotional message was there in those things. And it wasn't caught up in the glitz and glamour of production bells and whistles, which I myself have embraced at times in the past. So I wanted to kind of strip it down, and I realized I felt comfortable not fitting a lot of layers of stuff in. I thought, 'Let's only put in what is absolutely necessary. Let's take a stripped-down approach.'

I realized that the last couple of records were written in the studio. So the writing and production and arrangement phase all kind of took place at the same time, bypassing having demos. Songs would start sometimes with a soundscape, sometimes a visual idea, sometimes a drumbeat, sometimes a cool effect, sometimes a chord change. But, usually, the setting was created first, and then a song kind of got wedged in there later on. And this time around, I went about it pretty much the opposite way. I set up a kind of demo room out in Los Angeles and moved out here from New Orleans, really just for a change of pace. I wanted to set up a place where I didn’t have too many options, and I wanted to do demos this time around.[16]

An interview with Atticus Ross in EQ Magazine[17] gave some details about gear that was used for the album:

For some of the tracks on With Teeth, Reznor played a Moog Voyager through a Fuzz Factory or a few other radical distortion guitar pedals. "And as he was playing, he'd be screwing with the guitar pedals," says Ross. "We'd record for a while and Trent would usually stumble into something that sounded pretty unique." Since the whole record was performance-based, this worked well with the theme.

One of the favorite hardware synths for With Teeth was the Vostok, which would often be hooked up to a huge modular wall with Doepfer, Analogue Solutions, and Metasonix pedals with various sequencers, drum machines, and other synths attached.

"We used a Kenton Pro 2000 for MIDI to CV with Trent's preferred controller for the modular being the French connection," says Ross. "Although this can be played as a regular keyboard, Trent performed many of the parts for With Teeth with the ring and thread."

"Even MIDIable instruments would be sent through external chains recorded into the audio as performances," he says. A suitcase Synthi and 2 Sherman Filterbanks – chained together – were used as well.

In addition to the hardware synths, a lot of soft synths were deployed, including several from GForce: Ohm Force, ImpOSCar, Oddity, and the MTron. "Those would often be programmed in all sorts of different ways," says Ross. "Sometimes we would take that out through the modular, sometimes we would find stuff to do to it inside of the computer, or sometimes one synth would go into another synth just to get a different effect."

The album is also notable for the fact that several tracks ("All The Love In The World", "You Know What You Are?", "The Collector", "Every Day Is Exactly The Same", "Getting Smaller", "Sunspots", "The Line Begins To Blur", and non-album track "Non-Entity") feature Dave Grohl on drums. In a post to the Access section of nin.com, Reznor stated that Grohl had drummed on fifteen tracks, and it is not known why he only features on a total of eight tracks. Reznor had been wanting a Dave Grohl-esque drum sound during the initial stages of recording, and realized it would make more sense to simply ask Grohl if he would do the drumming.[18] While there were no proper physical liner notes for With Teeth, Grohl's drum credits appeared on the PDF file that was released alongside the album, as well as on nin.com at the time of the album's release.

Themes

With Teeth, unlike most Nine Inch Nails albums, does not have a unified concept and deals with a variety of themes. Reznor wrote the album after overcoming undisclosed addictions and settling legal issues with his former manager, John A. Malm, Jr.:

A lot of this was [about] my relationship with myself, the world at large, and where I might fit into that...Also [it's about] my relationship to a disease that's going to kill me if I don't deal with it, and I came very close to that. Hopefully disguised enough that it's not a terribly boring record about recovery and addiction and that nonsense.

Reznor seemingly gained a new awareness of world issues, and showed this by speaking out against the US Government, as well as becoming a spokesperson for PETA. Some songs seem to deal with addiction ("With Teeth", "Sunspots"), while others have a more political intent ("The Hand That Feeds", "Right Where It Belongs").

Packaging and artwork

With Teeth was the only NIN album packaged without proper liner notes until the standard edition of Hesitation Marks. Lyrics as well as detailed credits for the album were only available at the album's promotional site (both onscreen and in the form of the aforementioned PDF poster.) In a post on the Access section of nin.com, Reznor expressed disillusion with the CD format and the subsequent shift toward digital, stating that the idea of forgoing physical liner notes felt appropriate for the times and the changing of the album experience.

Reznor had originally wanted to release a more lavish package for the album once the second leg of the tour had begun, but this never materialized. Lyrics were eventually included in the Definitive 2019 Vinyl edition. In a 2005 interview, Reznor stated his original plan:

What do you do when you buy a record now? I either download it or, more likely, I'll immediately put the CDs I buy in my iPod and then I lose them. Artwork is disposable now. I liked albums. It was an exploratory process. I don't see that with CDs. They're junk. It feels like we should just by-pass packaging all together. If you want to, you'll be able to buy a real deluxe book that the record fits into. It's a super nice thing that will have a big essay from me and a lot of pictures. It's more of a presentation and the artwork that you have now, that maybe you didn't quite understand, you'll see how it all fits into this. You'll get it.[19]

In 2021, Rob Sheridan revealed that gel electrophoresis was used in the With Teeth artwork, as had been suspected by some fans.[20]

Definitive 2019 Edition Vinyl

A vinyl reissue campaign of the NIN catalog was begun in 2017 with three albums, and was continued in 2019 when With Teeth was released as the next installment. The item's description reads:

At long last, the Definitive version of With Teeth, meticulously prepared by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and NIN art director John Crawford. Remastered in 2019 on 180-gram vinyl, with lots of details attended to that you may never notice but we care about.

This edition of the vinyl comes with a digital download card and a booklet containing photos and an essay about the album, written by David Fricke. It also contains the lyrics, adapted from the old PDF poster.

Instrumental Version

With Teeth Instrumental Artwork

Alternative instrumentals artwork

With Teeth Instrumental was made available on June 30, 2015, via Apple Music. It contained instrumentals of every track (except the international track "Home") with "All The Love In The World" being an alternate version.

It was released alongside The Fragile Instrumental, and was exclusive to the Apple Music platform. It is no longer available, but can be found on nindestruct.com in the music section.[21]

Touring

For more information, see Live: With Teeth

The album was supported by a major tour that visited clubs, arenas and amphitheaters around the world and lasted over a year. With Reznor clean and sober, the shows took on a somewhat new kind of atmosphere, with greater musical precision and a slightly more upbeat attitude. The tour incorporated new visual elements, with different kinds of lighting and set design than had been used on previous tours. Portions of the tour were filmed and released as Beside You In Time on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray in 2007.

Live

All With Teeth era songs have been played live, though "Sunspots" didn't make its debut until 2022.

Album Credits

• Writing, arrangement, and performance: Trent Reznor
• Production: Trent Reznor and Alan Moulder
• Programming and additional production: Atticus Ross
• Engineering: Alan Moulder, Leo Herrera, Trent Reznor, James Brown, and Rich Costey
• Additional production and engineering: Gem Archer
• 5.1 Surround mix: James Brown and Trent Reznor
• Sound design: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
• Mastering: Tom Baker at Precision Mastering
• Surround mastering: Adam Ayan for Gateway Mastering
• Additional drum programming: Jerome Dillon

• Design: Rob Sheridan

• Project Coordination: Leo Herrera
• Studios: Nothing Studios (New Orleans), The Village Recorder, Sound City Studios, and Grandmaster Recording Studios (Los Angeles)
• Assistance: Brett Bachemin, Dustin Mosley, Pete Martinez, Andrew Alekel, Chad Essig, Neal Ferrazzani, Jason Wormer, and Andy Brohard
• Drum technicians: Jeremy Berman, Gerch for Drum Fetish

• Management: Rebel Waltz, Inc.
• Booking: Marc Geiger for WMA, Emma Banks for Helter Skelter
• Legal: Ross Rosen, David Altschul, Zia Modabber
• Business management: Bill Harper, Irwin Rennert, Michael Walsh
• Styling: April Napier
• Hair: Eric Gabriel
• Grooming: Cori Bardo

• DVD-A menus and imagery: Rob Sheridan
• Additional DVD-A art design by The DZN Group
• DVD-A Authoring: Paul Angelli, DVD Labs
• Audio asset coordination: Michel Etchart
• Executive producers for DVD-Audio: Coutney Holt, Paul Bishow
• Supervising producer: Jim Belcher
• Producer for DVD-Audio: Kamran V
• "The Hand That Feeds" video directed by Rob Sheridan

All songs written by Trent Reznor ©2005 Leaving Hope Music/TVT Music (ASCAP) Administered by Leaving Hope Music, Inc. Dave Grohl appears courtesy Roswell Records

Thank you: Rick Rubin, Jim Guerinot, Mark Geiger, Jimmy Iovine, Jackie McPherson, David Cohen, Steve Berman, Mark Williams, Dennis Dennehy, David Saslow, Courtney Holt, Candace Berry, Martin Kierszenbaum, Angelica Czekalski, Wendy Diplock, Kathy Angstadt, Kamran V, Jeff Anderson, Shaynee Lee-Gordy, Lindsay Chase, Keith Hillebrandt, Brenda Romano, Robbie Lloyd, Melissa Taylor, Gretchen Anderson, Christina Meloche, Sidney Miltz, Kim Kennedy, Jamie Myers, Doug Idleman, Tim Lightfoot, Gino Ascani, Mark Stephen, Susan Swan, Dave “Rave” Ogilvie, Danny Lohner, Charlie Clouser, Claudia Sarne, Don Passman, Eric Ferman, Larry Tull, Ian Astbury, Maynard James Keenan, Jason Pettigrew, Jen Foster, Jim and Bebe Rose, Kevin Llewllyn, Lindsay Dakota, Myriam Santos-Kayda, Nancy Berry, Pete Thorne, Ralf Dietel, Richard Devine, Rupert Parkes, Alien Tom, Simon B, Steph Jorgl, Ted Revely, Tiffany Andrews, Tamar Levine, Michael Angelos, Walker Rollins

Support: Chandra Lynn @ DigiDesign, Andrew Grad @ West LA Music, Dave Casey @ Apogee, Mike Harris @ Harris Audio Systems, Guitar Center, Roger Cordell @ Big City Music, Bela Canhoto @ Native Instruments, Chris Goodwin @ Eastwest, Tim Godwin @ Line 6, Priscilla Larey @ Larvey Engineering, Orange County Drums, Billy Siegle @ Fender, Truetone Music, Steve "Coco" Brandon, Paul J. Cox, Ross Reeck

Nine Inch Nails Live With Teeth: Alessandro Cortini, Jerome Dillon, Aaron North, Trent Reznor, and Jeordie White

External Links

• With Teeth PDF at Google Drive
• With Teeth PDF at mega
• Bleedthrough imagery by Rob Sheridan
• Early With Teeth art explorations by Rob Sheridan
• With Teeth concept art by Rob Sheridan
• With Teeth teaser videos
• With Teeth at nincatalog.com
• With Teeth at Amazon
• With Teeth at eBay

Discography

Previous release - "The Hand That Feeds" Halo number: 19 Next release - "Only"