In Part One of this article, I called the music Nine Inch Nails definitively pop, if only because of high record sales and widespread name recognition. It can't exactly be said that Trent Reznor aimed for the pop charts, though. Especially in the past decade, NIN's albums have barely touched the accessibility of the band's first three albums. Listening to Reznor's post-2000 work, it's a bit easier to understand both what made his music in the 90's so special and what has marginalized his sound in the 21st century. Trent Reznor, and by extension Nine Inch Nails, is more interested in experimentation than hit-making. These days, Reznor can afford to make whole albums based on fiddling and fund tours all on his lonesome. As such, the radio songs have all but dried up.

• Into The Void

• The Day The World Went Away
• Complication
• Underneath It All
• The Wretched
• The Fragile
• I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally

1999's The Fragile took five years to hit the shelves. It's a common enough beast in the pop music jungle, a double album that doesn't really need to be a double album. When an artist spends too much time with his work, he usually grows too attached to the stuff that probably should have been discarded before the official release. There's still a lot of good material on The Fragile, but there's also a lot of noodling that stops just shy of being fully-realized music. There's a big difference between successfully unusual tracks like "The Day The World Went Away" and any number of too-quiet instrumental pieces that dot both discs.

• All The Love in the World
• Every Day Is Exactly The Same
• Only
• Beside You in Time

After another six years, NIN released With Teeth, which for a younger artist would be considered a transition album. Of all Trent Reznor's post-2000 work, this album is the most interesting. He tries a lot of new things on With Teeth, including a very important departure from the heavy goth/industrial tones of most of his work. A lot of it is more general electronic and surprisingly funky (re: "Only"). The album sounds full of life and good ideas. For whatever reason, Reznor didn't continue to pursue these avenues in his subsequent work.

• Survivalism
• The Good Soldier
• Capital G

The problem with most concept albums is that nobody but the artist knows they're supposed to be concept albums. If Trent Reznor didn't tell anyone that Year Zero was about fictional characters in a near-future setting making political commentary brought on by Bush Era violence and corruption, would anyone have been able to discern that on their own? There are a few especially cool songs on this album, like the surprisingly groovy "The Good Soldier", but also a lot of dead weight brought on by too much political ambition and not enough music to support it. A lot of Year Zero has a similar feel to the late-period work of New Order. It's the sound of a seasoned musician produced well. Professional, but not necessarily stirring.

• Letting You
• Head Down

And so the experimentation becomes the centerpiece. 2008's The Slip is more or less a Dub Step album with Trent Reznor singing over it. When this formula works, like on "Letting You", it's sublime. It's like listening to a version of Nine Inch Nails that decided to explore the hip hop influences of the band's earliest work instead of the industrial sound Reznor ultimately chose. The rest is a thick morass of the worst possible place to bring neophytes with an interest in Nine Inch Nails.

I decided not to include anything from the massive Ghosts I-IV instrumental records both because there are better instrumental offerings on the regular studio albums and because it's basically the sound of Trent Reznor enjoying the luxuries of being an unsigned artist. He left Interscope in 2007, and quite loudly. Reznor went on a long screed against Interscope's parent company Universal Music Group and actively encouraged his fans to illicitly download his work, eventually uploading The Slip to his own website, giving it away to his listeners for free in much the same way that Radiohead did with In Rainbows. He claimed that he didn't like the marketing and pricing of his albums, but Trent Reznor never much liked record companies in general.