How to Destroy Angels' impressive new album

How to Destroy Angels have teamed up with Pitchfork Advance in order to stream their first full length album, Welcome Oblivion for free. This is no regular album stream though, as it includes album artwork, as well as several short videos to accompany the music.

Tracks available to stream:

1. Wake Up: the best opening track of all the HTDA releases.
2. Keep it together*: I still have neutral feelings about this track. I like the remixes though.
3. And the sky began to scream: from 03:00 onwards is reminiscent of Trent Reznor's earlier songs.
4. Welcome Oblivion: could easily be mistaken for a remix of a b-side from The Fragile era, with elements from Atticus Ross and Reznor's soundtracks thrown in for good measure. I like that this track has some aggressive vocals. This song will surely satisfy many Nine Inch Nails followers who are craving some new material from the project.
5. Ice age*: the original version of this song has grown on me me a little, but I still prefer the Soft Moon remix.
6. On the wing*: starts with some promise, but the vocals killed it for me. Not my favourite track, but not a bad one.
7. Too late, all gone: I liked the intro. I didn't like the verse, but the bridge and chorus are astounding. Overall this sounds like a mash-up of the Dust Brothers soundtrack for Fight Club and a b-side from NIN's Year Zero.
8. How long?: I like everything about this track; it is one of the songs where Mariqueen Maandig-Reznor has demonstrated her true vocal abilities. I really want to hear this song get a few plays on a  local radio station. The video is excellent too.
9. Strings and attractors: another track in which Maandig-Reznor flexes her vocal chords a bit. Unfortunately the spoken versus detract from the chorus, which is a beautiful combination of Reznor and Maandig-Reznor's voices. They really need to do another duet like this.
10. We fade away: with a guest appearance by Alessandro Cortini, I was a little disappointed by this track on the first listen. I was hoping it would build  into something that was reminiscent of one of the jams from Ghosts I-IV, but instead it turned out sounding a bit like a reworked left over from The Social Network soundtrack. It did sound better after a second listen though.
11. Recursive self-improvement: fortunately this track has the groovy, experimental noodling I was expecting to be featured in We fade away.
12. The loop closes*: still one of my favourites, although not so much the chanting at the end. It also has a cool video.
13. Hallowed ground: The piano in this piece, once again evokes memories of sounds from The Social Network score, None-the-less, it's a good choice to close the album off with.

* Tracks originally released on An Omen EP.

Overall, I enjoyed this album, and am considering getting the vinyl edition. Listening to this on a pair of earphones for the first time has definitely made a difference, especially with regard to the tracks that were originally released on the An Omen EP. It also helps to have heard the rest of the album in order to fully appreciate how the tracks on the EP fit in with the concept of the album.

For me the stand out tracks were Welcome oblivion, How long?, Recursive self-improvement and Hallowed ground.