Anyone familiar with Nine Inch Nails (NIN) knows that the waiting is the hardest part. With one-man mastermind Trent Reznor, taking long spans of time between albums is quite normal, and he's continued with this tradition -- it's been five and a half years since the last album of new material, 1999's double-disc opus The Fragile.

Next to the upcoming Guns N' Roses album, NIN's new CD, With Teeth -- which hits stores on May 3 -- has been the highest-anticipated rock album of the 2000s.

So does it live up to the immense hype? That all depends on if the listener can deal with the fact that Reznor's lightened up a bit -- and has less of a dark cloud surrounding his music these days.

With Teeth is the most accessible album of the band to date, next to its pop-infused debut Pretty Hate Machine. This may deter some of the fans that tend to worship NIN's best-selling industrial album The Downward Spiral (the new single "The Hand That Feeds" is an infectious dance-pop song). However, Reznor did do away with the long moments of somewhat self-important ambiance that plagued The Fragile, leaving a meaty 13 tunes that seem to sound like a happy medium between the mostly upbeat Pretty Hate Machine and the introspective Fragile discs.

The wall of aggressive noise that made The Downward Spiral a hit can still be found here on occasion. Songs such as "You Know What You Are?" hit the listener with a punch to the eardrum, and the title song also delivers, as Reznor shouts, "You've finally found a place where you belong."

It does indeed seem as if Reznor and company have found a place where they belong -- outside of the bleakness of a downward spiral, and into slightly greener pastures.

-- Reviewed by Mike Kulick