Album: The Downward Spiral
Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Born: Cleveland, Ohio
Released: March 1994
Genre: Industrial Rock
Nihilism. The belief that traditional ideas (love) and beliefs (religion) have no value. On this record, Nine Inch Nails set about charting one man's downward spiral into a nihilistic abyss, experimenting with various drugs on his descent to numb the pain. I can't pretend that I was listening to this record in 1994; it's more likely, in that year, that I was listening to more radio-friendly heavy rock like Live's Throwing Copper or Soundgarden's Superunknown. Produced by South London musical whizz Flood (Mark Ellis), who'd already worked on Depeche Mode's Violator and U2's Joshua Tree, The Downward Spiral treads a fine line between tuneless metal and melodic pop. Listening to industrial music or metal is normally a pretty joyless experience, but there's something about the craft of this album and its songwriting that elevates it above the genre. Like Depeche Mode, Trent Reznor somehow pulled off the unlikely stunt of fusing industrial music with dance music, a trick best conjured up on Closer, one of the album's three successful singles, along with March Of The Pigs and Hurt. Closer's drum machine opening borders on disco, but then there's a harsh mechanistic sound that comes to dominate as Reznor sings with a voice full of lust and rage ("I want to f**k you like an animal"). What propelled the song up the charts was not just its depraved lyrics, but also its undoubted groove and the disturbing music video.
Mr Self Destruct sets the tone for the album, opening with the sound of something being beaten as well as noisy guitars and high beats-per-minute drum loops, before Reznor spits out the lyrics. The "voice inside your head" appears to be humanity's latent urges, from sex and spirituality to deceit and drugs, and sets up the record's thematic territory perfectly. Piggy operates at a much slower pace and is first to feature the album's leitmotif (Reznor's talents as a composer and arranger are one of his great musical strengths), while Heresy burns with atheistic rage. March Of The Pigs is an all-out sonic assault, with two piano breakdowns offering some respite, before it quickly segues into Closer and its sampling of Iggy Pop's Nightclubbing. Ruiner is one of the strangest songs on this record, transitioning from dancefloor drum beats to distorted 70s guitar solo, while The Becoming moves from industrial screams to acoustic serenity, as Reznor sings of the damage caused by emotional pain ("The me that you know, he used to have feelings / but the blood has stopped pumping and he's left to decay"). I Do Not Want This moves into musical territory that Radiohead would later explore on Kid A, while A Warm Place sounds heavily influenced by David Bowie's Low. As the albums draws to an end, you get the impression of a journey to the lower circles of hell, with Eraser full of despair and Reptile driven by machine-like percussion. The Downward Spiral returns to the album's leitmotif first introduced on Piggy as Reznor details the method of the suicide ("gun into his face ... bang!"). Hurt, an anti-drugs song now forever associated with Johnny Cash, acts more like a suicide note at the end of the album, full of the protagonist's regret at not having the capacity for redemption ("If I could start again / a million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way").
Nihilism. The belief that traditional ideas (love) and beliefs (religion) have no value. On this record, Nine Inch Nails set about charting one man's downward spiral into a nihilistic abyss, experimenting with various drugs on his descent to numb the pain. I can't pretend that I was listening to this record in 1994; it's more likely, in that year, that I was listening to more radio-friendly heavy rock like Live's Throwing Copper or Soundgarden's Superunknown. Produced by South London musical whizz Flood (Mark Ellis), who'd already worked on Depeche Mode's Violator and U2's Joshua Tree, The Downward Spiral treads a fine line between tuneless metal and melodic pop. Listening to industrial music or metal is normally a pretty joyless experience, but there's something about the craft of this album and its songwriting that elevates it above the genre. Like Depeche Mode, Trent Reznor somehow pulled off the unlikely stunt of fusing industrial music with dance music, a trick best conjured up on Closer, one of the album's three successful singles, along with March Of The Pigs and Hurt. Closer's drum machine opening borders on disco, but then there's a harsh mechanistic sound that comes to dominate as Reznor sings with a voice full of lust and rage ("I want to f**k you like an animal"). What propelled the song up the charts was not just its depraved lyrics, but also its undoubted groove and the disturbing music video.
Mr Self Destruct sets the tone for the album, opening with the sound of something being beaten as well as noisy guitars and high beats-per-minute drum loops, before Reznor spits out the lyrics. The "voice inside your head" appears to be humanity's latent urges, from sex and spirituality to deceit and drugs, and sets up the record's thematic territory perfectly. Piggy operates at a much slower pace and is first to feature the album's leitmotif (Reznor's talents as a composer and arranger are one of his great musical strengths), while Heresy burns with atheistic rage. March Of The Pigs is an all-out sonic assault, with two piano breakdowns offering some respite, before it quickly segues into Closer and its sampling of Iggy Pop's Nightclubbing. Ruiner is one of the strangest songs on this record, transitioning from dancefloor drum beats to distorted 70s guitar solo, while The Becoming moves from industrial screams to acoustic serenity, as Reznor sings of the damage caused by emotional pain ("The me that you know, he used to have feelings / but the blood has stopped pumping and he's left to decay"). I Do Not Want This moves into musical territory that Radiohead would later explore on Kid A, while A Warm Place sounds heavily influenced by David Bowie's Low. As the albums draws to an end, you get the impression of a journey to the lower circles of hell, with Eraser full of despair and Reptile driven by machine-like percussion. The Downward Spiral returns to the album's leitmotif first introduced on Piggy as Reznor details the method of the suicide ("gun into his face ... bang!"). Hurt, an anti-drugs song now forever associated with Johnny Cash, acts more like a suicide note at the end of the album, full of the protagonist's regret at not having the capacity for redemption ("If I could start again / a million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way").
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