COURTNEY LOVE’S dismissal of Trent Reznor as a farmboy who’d never really seen The Horror was glib but off-the-mark: any Deliverance fan will tell you there’s as much atrocity to be found in redneck terrortory as the urban sprawl, and Columbine scenarios are an epidemic endemic to the sticks, not the inner city.

Still, the put-down evidently smarted: the gimpy lurch of ‘Starfuckers Inc.’ on The Fragile could equally be a thinly veiled swipe at Ms Love (incorporating Carly Simon’s infamous “You’re so vain . . .” chorus) and at Reznor’s protegé-cum-nemesis Marilyn Manson. However, the difference between this album and Manson’s last corresponds roughly to that between Picnic At Hanging Rock and The Blob: one is a psychological mindfuck, the other a powder-puff panto.

That said, a question mark has continued to hang over Reznor’s rep. The aspersions go something like this: Trent’s pain ain’t ‘4 real’, he’s a dilettante with a vested interest in the black arts, a dabbler who saw more of the abyss than he bargained for upon moving into 10050 Cielo Drive to record The Downward Spiral.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what grisly processes Reznor put himself through in New Orleans in order to produce this third full-length album; he’s still left plenty of room for the listener’s own private abominations. The fact that Bob Ezrin gets credited for providing “continuity and flow” throws some light on the dark heart of the music – the veteran producer may have shlock rockers like Alice Cooper and Kiss on his resume, but he was also present at the traumatic births of such razor’s-edge epics as Lou’s Berlin and Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Mind you, you’d be well advised to skip the lyric sheet, which too often reads like the dried blood entries in a troubled adolescent’s journal (“Tried to save myself/But myself keeps slipping away”) and instead concentrate on the artist’s considerable skills as a manipulator and debaser of raw sound.

Forget the old Pixies/Nirvana 1-to-11 dynamic, NIN records are infinitely more subtle – especially on headphones – but still leave you feeling like you’ve been brutally skullfucked for two hours; no wonder the likes of Bowie and Bono remain smitten. And that debt of influence is repaid when the former’s henchmen Mike Garson and Adrian Belew scatter characteristically fractured shards of sound over this record.

But then, Trent’s reference points are many, from Ministry (‘Somewhat Damaged’) to Chopin (‘The Frail’, ‘La Mer’) to Joy Division (‘The Day The World Went Away’). And like Tricky, his spooked yet incensed ventings have more to do with Robert Johnson than any of the bluesman’s latter day interpreters might care to admit. It’s a thin line between “Hello Satan/I believe it’s time to go” and “I will take my place/In the great below” (‘The Great Below’).

Reznor’s no genius, but he is rigourous, especially on the Prince-like sparsity of tracks like ‘The Way Out Is Through’, ‘Into The Void’ and ‘Where Is Everybody’.

On the other hand, he could’ve applied some of that rigour to the overall editing process – TR’s craving to create an epic of agony on a par with Bosch or Bacon often stifles his popcore instincts. When he does allow melody and structure to take precedent (as on the scalding ‘We’re In This Together’ and the title tune) the result is as healing as it is scarifying.

Nine Inch Nails recordings are never anything but intense, and I’d usually advise against purchasing a double-set this extreme and impenetrable on spec. Interested parties however, can rub their hands at the prospect of the fresh perversities arrayed on The Fragile. And for what it’s worth, count me in.