How long should any musical artist stay away from recording and touring (if they have no plans of disbanding or go back to what they were doing before they became famous)? I ask this question, what with all the musicians I grew up all making comebacks in mind.

Green Day, for example. After Dookie, the stuff they came up with were so forgettable I can't even remember the album titles. And with the flooding of pop-punk bands, I thought ay, forget it. Then came American Idiot and then came Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It was the nagging reminder to these teenagers that this was THE band that paved the way for them. Shut up and pay your respects.

And then there's Nine Inch Nails. I still maintain to this day that The Downward Spiral changed my prototype of the crushable disaffected rock star. The video to March of the Pigs was sparse - the band performing in what looked like a studio, Trent Reznor being his dramatic self - and yet the song shone through. It was the example of the often-abused expression 'Less is more'. If you have a kick-ass song, there's no need for a kick-ass video.

The aforementioned video came to mind when I saw the video for their new single The Hand That Feeds. Continuing Reznor's predilection for 'bluish' videos (maybe it works well with his pale complexion), the new video seems to be a retrospective nod. Hazy kinetic shots, all about showing the song. Reznor does not even take centerstage, not the usual lingering shots around the lead singer. Which is always a good idea, unless you're Dogstar and there is no redeeming value to your presence in the music scene, save for your lead singer whose name happens to be Keanu Reeves.

Watching The Hand That Feeds, I was hoping for the excitement that I felt when I first saw Hurt or even The Perfect Drug. I didn't get any. I wondered why, knowing that someone like Trent Reznor would most likely have the adequate degree of obsessive compulsiveness to monitor even the direction of his first music video in what seems like five or six years.

It wasn't the video, it was the song.

By the second minute, I was already assessing the weak points of the song. Not a good thing for me, as something that is gripping would normally leave me mellow and switching to the other music channel, hoping they'll be playing it by now.

(Shades of me and Teny sitting through a set at 70s Bistro with me picking on the sound system are coming back to me now.)

In the case of March of the Pigs, it was the first NIN song I've ever heard, my first introduction to industrial metal, so it was perfectly understandable. With Hurt, the lyrics and haunting sound engineering still weakens me. The Perfect Drug had traces of dance which, at the time, was permissible. (A belated introduction to New Order enlightened me as to why even Francis Reyes adores this relic of the 80s.)

The Hand That Feeds was all power lyrics, no oomph. (And I thought I buried this word to oblivion.) Could it be that my ears are constantly bombarded by Deftones, System of a Down and the like that NIN seem like air by now? I don't think so. Even now when I mentally play March of the Pigs, I still understand the appeal of the song.

See, even now, I can't even remember exactly why the song doesn't work. All I can muster right now are my reactions to the song. If I still feel like it, I'll hunt for the song and give it a second listen.

(Next time: Why I'll never get tired watching New Order's Krafty - and it's not because it's going to be a long school vacation.)