I don't follow rock music news well enough anymore and didn't even know they were putting out the vault. That will definitely be interesting - I hope people here who listen to it will share their thoughts. Not sure if it's something I'd spend the money on or not.

As for the new stuff, I feel like I'm always ultimately disappointed in new music by older, reunited rock bands. Most of them are past their creative prime at the time of their break up anyway. I can usually get excited enough to enjoy those albums when they first come out - be it Alice in Chains or Blind Melon (still a fan!) or even Chinese Democracy - but they rarely stick with me. I'm trying to keep my expectations in check for Faith No More's album next year. I'll have a similar mindset for new Soundgarden music - if there's one or two songs I like, I'll call it a success. It's hard to recapture that former glory.

'Storm' doesn't do much for me on first listen, but I always appreciate the chance to listen to Matt Cameron drum so I won't complain.

Agreed about the CD vault. I  stopped paying any attention to GNR years ago but still want that.

Believe it or not!

That's so funny you say that, because I literally had that thought during last night's game - if the Pats had traded up for Jones, they'd be miles better. I may be wrong here, but I think it's hard to get good WRs in the late 1st and 2nd round. Some great ones are high picks, and some come out of nowhere, but those second-tier guys seem to bust as much as the late round picks. So NE probably should've moved themselves into higher position in a good WR year at some point. When they had Moss and Welker, they were scoring 50. Even Hernandez and Gronkowski were formidable. But now they're unbelievably weak there. It's going to end their season at some point, probably on the road in the playoffs.

These are all early thoughts, but here goes:

If you wanted an album to prove that Trent could still crank out some rockers with a little pop sensibilities, I think he’s sick of proving that. With Teeth was almost entirely a statement record saying (to the record companies, mostly) ‘fuck you, I can still write a hit rock record with 3 singles’, and The Slip has a couple more throwaway rockers (my opinion) if you just want to head bang.

This is a dance album, and an electronic album. I think that’s a logical progression for Trent, who’s been living a happier life and scoring films the last few years while electronic music has been growing more mainstream than it was in NIN’s peak. If you don’t like Came Back Haunted, you probably won’t like the album, as it’s a pretty good representation of its sound. If you like Pretty Hate Machine and The Fragile, and I know a lot of people probably consider those albums polar opposites, but if you like both of those, I think this pulls mostly from those. After The Fragile, Trent really didn’t get too deep with the layering or texture of his instrumentals. Things got simpler, more Pro Tools sounding, and I think a lot of fans sensed that he ended up thinking The Fragile was overly indulgent because he plays almost none of it live. Hesitation Marks is probably the most detailed instrumentation since The Fragile, although it still bares a lot of the production touches of NIN’s recent albums.

I can’t do a real song-by-song because I didn’t always know what song I was listening to. It’s funny, Copy of A is probably my least favorite song on the album. As for Everything, I think it’s good Trent wrote a Green Day song because they need something new to steal. My favorites on 1-2 listens were All Time Low, Satellite, Various Methods of Escape, Came Back Haunted. There are a bunch of songs that are a lot better in the instrumental-heavy second half than the verse-chorus-verse first half. Came Back Haunted, Running, and I Would For You are all awesome halfway in, but a little forgettable in the beginning.

I think there’s a lot to like here. Honestly, when I listen to NIN I don’t reach for The Slip or Year Zero. This could get more plays for me. But of course, it’s too early to say. I thought Alice in Chains’ comeback was good the first time I heard it…

Censorship of porn is almost never about porn itself. It's motivated by a desire to enforce societal conformity in thought and art. While I wouldn't argue that all porn is OK, I'm fiercely opposed to censoring it. It's just too big an avenue for government to attempt to legislate moral norms that should be allowed to arise naturally out of society. I'd also be willing to bet a fair sum that any attempts to ban certain forms of porn will be discriminatory and unfair - for example, gay porn will be much harder to access while violent heterosexual porn will likely still make its way to people. I have no faith in any government to be able to be a fair arbiter of what porn is acceptable or not. I think the best choice is to treat it as speech and leave it mostly free. The US Supreme Court's experience is informative here. They used to rule on a lot of obscenity cases relating to pornography and were so frustrated by the difficulty of establishing a coherent legal principle for them that they eventually just stopped granting cert to those kinds of cases and created the broad standard of obscenity we have today, which allows almost anything that can be reasonably argued to be of any merit, even artistic. And you certainly won't see SCOTUS ruling on what's art and what isn't when they can avoid doing so. It's simply too difficult, and flirts with very dangerous government power in an area of life (expression) that is recognized to be essential to functioning republics and democracies.