Trent delivers a hammer blow

“I EAT your loathing, hate, and fear,” warns

Trent Reznor amid the sulphuric hurricane of Nine Inch Nails in assault mode. “Should probably stay away from here.”

Oh but it’s so comfy! The percussion sounds like it’s corroding in real time, the guitars sound like they’re fashioned from the viscera of a Demogorgon, and Reznor is ever the ebullient host as he holds up a

“s**t mirror” to humankind. “OBSOLETE INSIGNIFICANT/ANTIQUATED IRRELEVANT/CELEBRATION OF IGNORANCE,” he splutters on Ahead of Ourselves, like an alien bursting out of someone’s stomach. Stop it, Trent, you’re spoiling us!

Bad Witch is the third part of a trilogy that Reznor and writing partner Atticus Ross began in 2016 (following Not the Actual Events and Add Violence). I suspect Nails diehards will spend many moonlit hours studying it for signs. But really, you don’t need much pre-immersion to appreciate its gleaming textures and plangent reflections on what Reznor wryly terms America’s “existential unpleasantness”.

Bad Witch is darker and more immediate than its predecessors, with an expanded sonic pallet too: the saxophones and crooning of God Break Down the

Door recalling Reznor’s old collaborator David Bowie at his most apocalyptic.

Reznor rarely looks back, but after a period of late-career acceptance — winning Academy Awards for his movie soundtracks, writing Johnny Cash’s swansong Hurt — he’s headed back to the dark seam he tapped for still horrifying 1990s albums like The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. That makes this the Nine Inch Nails equivalent of a nostalgia trip.