Maybe this is the anti-Christmas: the Nine Inch Nails release that Trent Reznor promised for 2016, a five-song EP arriving barely under the wire on Dec. 22. Nine Inch Nails is now the team of Mr. Reznor and Atticus Ross as both songwriters and studio band, and they've made a sharp turn away from Nine Inch Nails' 2013 album, the relatively skeletal, electronic and dance-beat-driven "Hesitation Marks." The new songs are furious, grating blasts of guitars and electronics, bristling with noise that arrives from all registers and directions. Mr. Reznor sings — and whispers and rants — about sickness, rot, insanity and annihilation, and about consciousness trapped in crumbling bodies and minds. "Branches/Bones" is an electropunk buzzbomb; "Dear World," uses insistently blippy electronic dance music behind what may be a suicide note or the testimony of a splitting personality. "She's Gone Away" is a booming, hollow-eyed, two-chord death march eventually flooded by distortion; "The Idea of You" pummels one chord and a six-beat rhythm over Mr. Reznor's desperate muttering. And "Burning Bright (Field on Fire)" is a slow, pitiless, formidably layered rock stomp that could be about immolation or rebirth. It's Nine Inch Nails at its least melodic and most balefully efficient. JON PARELES