Wiki
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Release Date
5 May 2008
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Length
10 tracks
The Slip (also known as Halo 27) is the eighth studio album from Nine Inch Nails. It was released as a free download on May 5, 2008, a CD/DVD package on July 22, 2008 and a vinyl on August 4th, 2008. The album is available for download in a variety of formats, including MP3, lossless FLAC and high-quality WAV files. When playing the MP3 files in an MP3 player a different piece of artwork is displayed for each song, as was the case with Ghosts I–IV.
While Trent Reznor is known for laboring over his music for years at a time, The Slip was written in a month and recorded in just three weeks, with mixing, mastering, and art taking one additional week. The album was originally intended to be an EP, but quickly grew to album length.
Prior to the album's release, a message was posted on nin.com, simply stating "2 weeks!". The previous time the same message had been posted on the site had been to forbear the release of Ghosts I-IV. Two tracks, "Discipline" and "Echoplex", were also released through radio and the internet respectively, both containing the message "go to www.nin.com May 5" in their ID3 tags.
On May 5th, nin.com was updated with the title Halo 27 and a link to theslip.nin.com with the message: "(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me)"
The album site requires a password to be submitted where the link to the download page can be sent to. The site itself states: "as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. we encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc."
According to a Rolling Stone article, the album was finished May 4th and sent to Sudjam, the company that manages nin.com, at 9:30 p.m. for a midnight release.
In a nin.com update on June 26th, 2008, it was reported that since the album's release on May 5th, 2008, over 1,400,000 people had downloaded The Slip from theslip.nin.com. That number represents individual people, and excludes multiple downloads from the same order.
Like Ghosts I–IV, the release of The Slip came as a surprise to most fans, who were expecting the next release to be a continuation of Year Zero. Reznor has indicated in interviews since the release that a Year Zero sequel was still in the works.
Aside from Art Is Resistance logo in the artwork for "Letting You", there are no clear, direct references to characters or events in Year Zero. Some tracks share similar themes, such as abuse of power ("Letting You"), an avatar of destruction ("Demon Seed"), submission to authority ("Head Down"), imprisonment ("Echoplex") and the appearance of entities in the sky ("Lights In The Sky"). Other songs, however, like "1,000,000" and "Discipline", seem completely unrelated and feature more "traditional" NIN themes of personal turmoil. It remains unclear which portions, if any, of The Slip should be considered canon in the Year Zero storyline.
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