-ZF

As many know, this is Nine Inch Nails’ last tour for an indefinite period of time, which adds a bit to the importance of this show, a well as the others on this tour. Technically it’s a co-headlining tour with Jane’s Addiction, but I’ll explain later why I didn’t include them in the post title. This concert was at PNC Banks Arts Center in Holmdel New Jersey. The venue was a large outdoor amphitheater, and thankfully the seats I had were not bad at all, a bit high but centered enough that it was easy to see the entire stage.

Since Patrick and I had prerelease tickets we were able to enter the venue (but not the seating area) early. Due to this, we were able to hear the Nine Inch Nails sound checks, which were a bit cool to hear, but ultimately getting in early wasn’t that big of a deal. Finally, after about an hour of waiting around the main plaza we were able to enter the amphitheater and take our seats. After about another half hour, the opening act Street Sweeper Social Club took the stage, and their show was quite entertaining. Despite not often listening to hip-hop/rap, I quite enjoyed the rapping of vocalist Boots Riley. I used to consider Tom Morello to be an overrated guitarist, but he completely rocked the house. The highlight was his shredding solo that ended with him playing his guitar with his tongue (yeah, it was epic). At the end of the show he also threw his guitar backstage for a crew member to catch, which was also pretty awesome. All in all their show was very entertaining and I will definitely be checking out their CD that comes out this month.

Pretty soon after Street Sweeper left the stage, the NIN song “Pinion” began to play over the PA and the crowd went wild as Reznor and co. took the stage. At this point, the sun had begun to set, meaning that the high production values of a Nine Inch Nails show were in full effect (their light shows are simply breathtaking). The next hour and a half was an incredible cathartic experience. Fan favorites such as “March of the Pigs”, “Hurt”, “Head Like a Hole”, “Discipline”, and “1,000,000″ were all played, but quite a lot of lesser played songs such as “Reptile” and “Meet Your Master” were played, keeping the set list exciting and fun. “Mr. Self Destruct” might have been the emotional high point of the show. I sang along to all the songs, like many others, and lost myself in the experience.

So to put it short, Nine Inch Nails was incredible. Too bad Jane’s Addiction is nowhere good enough to follow up such an experience. I had never really heard anything by the band before so I had an open mind going in to their show, but to be honest I didn’t enjoy it at all. To me, all the songs sounded the same and the singer’s voice irritated me. Patrick and I left a little over halfway through their set, which I felt was more than enough time to give them a fair chance.

Nevertheless, Nine Inch Nails alone was more than worth the price of admission. Their show was simply breathtaking, and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to see them live before the project is put on hold in a just a few months. If you have the chance, definitely try and see them. I’ll post links to pictures soon if I find any.

Setlist:

1. Pinion (over the PA)
2. Wish
3. Last
4. Discipline
5. March of the Pigs
6. Reptile
7. Meet Your Master
8. Gave Up
9. La Mer
10. Non-Entity
11. The Way Out Is Through
12. Mr. Self Destruct
13. 1,000,000
14. Echoplex
15. Survivalism
16. The Good Soldier
17. The Hand That Feeds
18. Head Like A Hole
19. Hurt (Encore)

This re-evaluation of The Downward Spiral was written for a 2006 Metal Hammer special on 90s music. This is, for me, an album that’s every bit as important as Highway 61 Revisited, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Bitches Brew, Master Of Reality, For Your Pleasure, Low, Closer, The Correct Use Of Soap and just about any other undisputed classics you care to mention.

In 1997, Trent Reznor was named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential people, sharing the honor with the cartoon character Dilbert and then US Secretary of State Madeline Albright. He was called “the anti-Bon Jovi” by Time. His “vulnerable vocals and accessible lyrics led an Industrial revolution: He gave the gloomy genre a human heart…Reznor’s music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy. But to the depressed, his music … proffers pop’s perpetual message of hope: There is worse pain in the world than yours. It is a lesson as old as Robert Johnson’s blues.” 

Reznor was the latest in a long line of brooding, dark romantic figures that included David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. He was also an overlooked recording genius, a studio nerd who pioneered a polished, aggressive hard rock sound that is still ubiquitous today.

He seemed an unlikely icon before and an even less credible one today. He’s still a figure of some importance and influence, yet the idea that he was perceived as the spokesman for generation x now seems faintly ludicrous.

Perhaps this is because he is now perceived as the Svengali behind Marilyn Manson, the puppet master who lost control of his creation. And for all his spikiness and the threat to the American way of life that he represents, Manson is more easily digested on MTV than Reznor ever was.

Throughout the 90s Reznor transcended genres and tribes: he appealed to goths because of his emaciated, pale demeanour; he appealed to fledgeling nu metalheads who loved the abrasive guitars and in your face beats; he appealed to ‘cyberpunk’ types who read Wired because it seemed that he seemed to be orchestrating the bleak future world of frazzled tech depicted by William Gibson in Neuromancer. Before the rise of his protégé Marilyn Manson,he was the USA’s most popular nihilist. This reputation rested largely on his masterpiece, the sprawling black hole of despair that was The Downward Spiral. 

Even today you can listen to The Downward Spiral and still discover things that you had never heard before. It’s almost as if the album has kept on growing and changing, updating itself between plays.

The first Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine, recorded in 1988, was essentially an electronic work heavily influenced by Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Depeche Mode, with Reznor as one man band, creating all the songs and sounds in the studio. The abrasive follow up (of sorts) Broken introduced distorted guitars and a hard rock sensibility. These largely appealed to a cult market, the still-thriving industrial underground. But by the time he made The Downward Spiral in 1994, the ‘mainstream’ of hard rock – under the influence of everyone from Rage Against The Machine and Nirvana to post-‘black album’ Metallica – was moving towards where Trent Reznor had already staked out his territory. 

In 1992 Reznor moved to Los Angeles. He had just signed a deal with Interscope that gave him the artistic freedom that he needed to work on his third album. He wanted a property where he could set up his own recording studio.

The Downward Spiral was one of the first albums to be recorded entirely using state of the art digital technology whereby sounds were recorded and stored on a computer hard drive rather than on magnetic tape. They could then be digitally altered – adding effects, reverb or taking such effects off and cleaning the sound up where necessary – rather than just putting the band in the studio, recording the instruments and mixing it together.

The beauty of digital recording is that it can really be done anywhere. The location Trent wanted had to be sufficiently isolated but large enough to accommodate the gear and any collaborators like producer Flood and his main collaborator/assistant drummer Chris Vrenna, whose job was to sift through hundreds of videos for samples to be used on the album. He found a house to rent in the Hollywood Hills, a ranch style bungalow on Cielo Drive. It’s a beautiful, picturesque location, set in the real super-rich Los Angeles populated by movie executives, actresses and musicians. The house he rented at 10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills had had some famous tenants in the past, most notably maverick Polish film director Roman Polanski his beautiful young wife actress Sharon Tate.

One sultry night in August 1969 while the heavily pregnant Sharon and her friends were turning in for the night, a group of hippies broke in. In the space of an hour Sharon watched as her friends Abagail Folger, Jay Sebring and Voytek Frykowski were slaughtered in front of her. Then they killed Sharon, ripping the unborn baby boy from her womb. She was alive to see this. They wrote in her blood the words ‘Pig’ and ‘Healter Skelter’ (sic) on the walls and on the door.

Trent had moved into the house made famous by the so-called Manson murders.

“It’s a coincidence,” he told Rolling Stone at the time. “When I found out what it was, it was even cooler.”

Later, he admitted that he had in fact deliberately chosen the location for the bad vibes but regretted this after a meeting with Sharon Tate’s sister Doris.

At the time they were recording in the house, Vrenna and Reznor nicknamed the studio ‘le pig’, alluding to the word ‘pig’ scrawled on the wall in Sharon Tate’s blood by killer Susan Atkins. One of the strongest tracks on the album was also March Of The Pigs, though Reznor denied that there  was any connection between this and Charles Manson. 

Reznor had been listening to a lot of David Bowie and the influence of Hunky Dory, the 1971 album where he attempted to redefine the way that pop songs were written, had percolated through. Bowie had tried to break away from the traditional verse/chorus/middle eighth/repeat structure of songwriting on that album, something that greatly appealed to Reznor.

While The Downward Spiral was not planned as a concept album, there are linking themes and recurring motifs in the songs. He had been keeping notes on his inner state since his chaotic booze and chemical fuelled stint on Lolopolooza. This provided the conceptual backbone for the songs: “It is personal experiences, but it’s wrapped up in the highly pretentious idea of a record with some sort of theme or flow to ‘em, and it was meant to be…It’s become a kind of a dated 70s concept, but some of the records that influenced me a lot on this album, like [David Bowie’s] Low and even The Wall – I’m sure I’m ripping off Pink Floyd, in fact, I know I am ripping them off. There’s records, although they may appear dated today, that try to do things that are more exciting to me than, ‘Here’s my video track and here’s my dance song and here’s my power ballad.’ All that kind of disposability. It was just me bored, trying to come up with something that I kind of wanted to set the parameters to work within, to focus more.” 

The expectations for The Downward Spiral were almost crippling. Pretty Hate Machine and Broken had – in a sense – both been produced in secret. But the constant pressure from fans, admirers and other bands asking when the new album was out, how it was going, what it would be like, what the songs would be, what colour the cover would be, started to take their toll.

The album was more of a struggle to make than he realised it would be. The original intention had been to make the album quickly. Reznor cited the example of Nirvana who had gone into the studio and made Nevermind in two weeks. But the process was different for him and soon his new record company Interscope were expressing ‘concern’ at the time that album seemed to be taking to make.

Reznor and Marilyn Manson had started to hang out together, Trent was determined that he would sign Manson to his own Nothing imprint. But aside from the music, the two also shared an interest in LA’s seamier side. As Manson recalled in his book The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, much of their time together was spent hunting groupies, indulging in strange sex and getting wasted. The stories of depravity that emerged from the sessions are legendary and not always repeatable for reasons of legality and taste. Suffice to say that Reznor even looked debauched, like some mildly bloated Byronic figure, or Jim Morrison after the booze and drugs had started to ravage his looks.

But Reznor survived. He later said: “I just wanted to kill myself. I hated music. I was like, ‘I just want to get back on the road because I hate sitting in a room trying to, trying to’ –how do you say this?—‘just scraping my fucking soul.’ Exploring areas of your brain that you don’t want to go to, that’s painful. You write something down and you go, ‘Fuck, I can’t say that. I don’t want people to know that.’ It’s so naked and honest that you’re scared to let it out. You’re giving a part of your soul away, exposing part of yourself. I avoid that. I hate that feeling of sending a tape out to someone: ‘Here’s my new song. I just cut my soul open. Check it out. Criticize it’.”

Reznor wanted to finish the album and get the Hell out of LA and back on the road.

“That’s the stupidest fucking reason for doing an album I’ve ever heard,” American recordings boss Rick Rubin told Trent when they ran into each other. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it until you make music that it’s a crime not to let other people hear.”

Somehow shaken by Rubin’s advice, Reznor knuckled under and – taking time out to work with Manson – delivered the finished album almost a year after he had started work. The flurry of writing and recording produced 16 songs and some leftovers that would crop up on b-sides, or would be reworked as material for remixes for Nine Inch Nails as well as other artists.

The songs were like frontline reports from the battlefield of Trent Reznor’s psyche. That they were classic songs of negativity, angst, despair and hatred would come as no surprise. But Reznor’s voice – previously heard only through a bank of distortion and FX screaming in mute nostril agony – was transformed, seductive and even sweet. From the deceptively quiet intro to Mr Self Destruct, through the piano melody on March Of The Pigs to the grandiose almost-pop of Closer, to the tenderness in the hate-ballad Piggy, it was clear that The Downward Spiral was an album with light and shade, with blended colours rather than just blocks of bold primary hues.  There was enough of the cyber jackbeat on Heresy and the intense title track itself that connected Reznor to his earlier work and still had him filed under ‘Industrial’. But the truth is that he wasn’t so much part of a different genre as an entirely new game altogether.

Attempting to recreate the same sense of ‘masterpiece’ about The Fragile, Reznor succeeded in making a great album that could only be listened to in small doses: in The Downward Spiral he made something magnificent that took you on a journey all the way to the heart of darkness. 

Se il porco è uno solo si grida allo scandalo, se sono dieci non si dice più nulla, se sono venti si dubita di se stessi, se sono ancora di più si grugnisce beatamente nel coro.

(Julien De Valckenaere)

Step right up march push. Crawl right up on your knees. Please greed feed (no time to hesitate). I want a little bit I want a piece of it I think hes losing it. I want to watch it come down. Dont like the look of it dont like the taste of it dont like the smell of it. I want to watch it come down. All the pigs are all lined up. I give you all that you want. Take the skin and peel it back.
Now doesnt that make you feel better?
Shove it up inside surprise! lies. Stains like the blood on your teeth. Bite chew suck away the tender parts. I want to break it up I want to smash it up I want to fuck it up. I want to watch it come down. Maybe afraid of it lets discredit it lets pick away at it.
I want to watch it come down. Now doesnt that make you feel better?
The pigs have won tonight. Now they can all sleep soundly. And everything is all right.

(Nine Inch Nails)

Morning.  Continuing on today with the third part of this little look at the 20 albums that had the biggest impact on me.  Yesterday ended with Nirvana at #10 and so we pick up from there.

11) Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger (1991)

If Nirvana were my own private Beatles, then Soundgarden became my Led Zeppelin with this record, which is still my favorite of theirs despite the rather large leap they made in songwriting with the release of Superunknown in 1994.  I’m quite certain I had heard “Hands All Over” from than the brilliant Louder than Love (1989) on Headbanger’s Ball prior to getting into this band, but when “Outshined” first unspooled on my ears it all clicked.  It had that insanely heavy chugging riff and the banshee wail of singer Chris Cornell, but somehow managed to remain an exquisitely melodic song.  This song was way heavier than most of what was passing as popular heavy metal two years prior and the dudes in the band just looked like they lived underground in tunnels somewhere, coming out only to play shows in dark rooms.  On a personal level, guitarist Kim Thyail completely blew the door off the hinges for my own playing (or lack thereof).  When I first saw the TABs for “Outshined” I remember thinking WHAT. IS. THIS??? You mean I can make my guitar sound heavier and play power chords with one finger just by tuning my E string down a step???  YES!!  Thyail always claimed to have ripped the dropped tuning from the Melvins, I believe, but my guess is he influenced more young guitarists in the nineties than any other player of the decade and that’s no joke.  An amazing record with incredibly talented musicians who I would probably pay more to see a reunion show from than any other band I can think of.  Including Led Zeppelin.  Here’s the great “Rusy Cage”:

12) Nine Inch Nails - the Downward Spiral (1994)

You know what I love about this record?  The notion that Trent Reznor sat in a room and made it himself.  That’s probably not even close to accurate, but that’s more or less what I took from this at the time and I’m sure I wasn’t alone.  How many people listened to this and thought “Gee, if I get a computer, a drum machine, some mics and a guitar, I could probably be my own Nine Inch Nails!“  Of course, there’s a little thing called “talent” that can’t be overlooked but I don’t want to downplay how inspiring a record like the Downward Spiral was and is to like-minded musicians even if I know this record will mostly be remembered as that one where the guy said he wanted to “f*ck you like an animal.”  NIN’s debut, Pretty Hate Machine, is an outstanding record in its own right but with Spiral, Reznor wasn’t just swinging for the fences he was swinging for the fences on Pluto and he by and large got there.  This is an incredibly textured, expansive record that moves back and forth between industrial and goth and metal and pseudo-dance-electronic-whatever and it does this without ever feeling disconnected.  I was late getting into the CD game, but this is not an album that should be listened on cassette or probably even vinyl.  Taking a break to flip sides with this one seems borderline sacreligious to me.  This is an album that should be played from start to finish with no stops and no distractions.  In that way, it’s a very cinematic record, playing like a film that doesn’t pause for commercial or station identification.  So many other bands in the mid to late 90’s took their shot at becoming the next Nine Inch Nails.  The fact that I can’t think of a single one that succeeded is a testament to the songwriting ability of Reznor, which has never quite come together so well as it did on this album.  Here’s “March of the Pigs”:

13) Tool – Undertow (1993)

I think I’ve mentioned before that there was one album I listened to more in the nineties than any other and this is it.  Tool completely and utterly changed everything (again!) for me when I heard this record.  There was nothing even remotely as mysterious as this in my music library and at the time I sort of just felt like you either got Tool or you didn’t, and if you didn’t then it was your loss.  In fact, I probably hoped the fewer people who got Tool the better; they felt like my secret, like the dead body in the woods that nobody else knew was just waiting there to be discovered.  Of course, this wasn’t exactly the case since the band had already released an EP prior to Undertow and were gathering a following that was increasing in numbers by the day.  But that said, this album and primarily its music videos (directed by guitarist Adam Jones)  distinctly altered what I looked for in music, visual art, and film.  It wasn’t enough to just have a surface appeal; Tool had a layer of subtext in all their work that I didn’t fully grasp and I loved it because of that.  Having said that though, the surface layer of what Tool was doing was pretty freaking awesome as well.  The guitars were heavy but not solely through the use of volume.  The drums were insane and off-putting but without entirely disconnecting from the song.  And Maynard’s voice was simply molded from some other species.  The word “haunting” is overused, but with that dude the shoe fits and he wears it well.  I remember being lukewarm about possibly going to Lolapalooza in 1993 despite having had a blast at the show in 1992.  And then I bought Undertow something like three or four days before the concert was to be held.  I listened to that album probably twice and that was all it took.  I bought a ticket the next day.  Here’s an idea of what it looked like:

14) Quicksand – Slip (1993)

I first heard Quicksand where else but on Headbanger’s Ball, which should further prove that at one point MTV actually used to be capable of improving people’s tastes instead of the opposite.  I knew nothing about the NYC hardcore scene from which this band rose and took a radical departure from, only that when I surprisingly discovered my neighbor had bought this disc I was determined to borrow it from him either with his permission or not.  Here again was a record that took only a listen or two before knowing that this was something different and something really, really good.  The closest reference I had was Helmet.  The dropped tuning, the stop and start rhythms, and a voice that shouted as much as it sang.  But there was also a deep seed of melody on this record and it didn’t have the same aggression as Helmet, though this did not leave it with any shortage of energy.  I listened to this CD over and over again, and aside from my one neighbor I honest to God knew no one else that liked this band until I went to college and soon realized that they had a sizable following.  Unfortunately, it was also around this time that the band broke up, leaving behind only two albums and an EP.  It sucks but Slip is still here to enjoy and discover.  If you’re into this kind of music at all I cannot recommend this album enough.  You can find a lot of imitators, but none who do what Quicksand does quite as well as they did on this record.  Here’s the mighty “Fazer.”

15) Jawbox – For Your Own Special Sweetheart (1994)

Here’s another band I stumbled upon that really stood out from the rest of the alternative rock landscape, but never quite really caught on.  Oddly enough, like Quicksand, Jawbox is often referred to as a post-hardcore band though I had no idea what that meant at the time I was listening to them both in constant rotation (and am still not sure I know what it means now).  All I knew then was that this band had guitar sounds I wasn’t familiar with and two singers that somehow worked a melody around these dissonant chords and quirky rhythms.  Another thing I knew was that nobody else in my circle was listening to them, and not even a neighbor this time.  I think the internet has changed this sense of “privilege” when it comes to music like this.  Now, if you like a band you can find thousands of other people who like them as well within seconds of a MySpace search.  I don’t lament this change, mind you.  In fact, I would’ve welcomed it at the time, I’m just merely pointing out the differences between now and then.  Because back then I would’ve loved to had a forum to shout about how great this record and Jawbox are.  And since Heath Michaels hasn’t invented a time machine yet, this blog will have to suffice.  Here’s the amazing “Savory”:

Whew.  These are hard to write but fun to think about (if not necessarily fun to read).  I’ll wrap things up tomorrow.  Until then…

This article by Terry Teachout speaks to the power of music. Evidently the U. S. Government used various musical selections to torture the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Teachout concludes,

I nevertheless find it significant — and not a little comforting — that the titles on Reprieve’s list of Music to Confess By include “Hell’s Bells” and Nine Inch Nails’ ”March of the Pigs” rather than, say, “Voi, che sapete” or “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” Nor is this coincidental. As an interrogator for the U.S. Army’s 361st Psychological Operations Company explained to Newsweek: “These people haven’t heard heavy metal. They can’t take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken.” The day anyone feels moved to say such things about “The Marriage of Figaro” is the day I’ll apply for early retirement.

One may quibble over the examples Teachout chose. Yet one’s mind immediately wanders to the fact that some professing believers use this kind of music–music very similar to that which was being used to torture detainees–in the worship of the true and living God. And they get ghastly offended if you even question them on this point.

Selah.

posted by rob at 5:58pm (ottawa, canada)

discuss @ nin.com

posted by rob at 7:23pm (new orleans, usa)

discuss @ nin.com

“The Downward Spiral”, the 1994 by Nine Inch Nails (a.k.a. Trent Reznor), is probably the single most disturbing and chilling album in my 450+ album collection. It is a concept album about a man who travels down the “downward spiral” of life, ending in his suicide. It’s an incredible achievement on many levels, though I feel the story goes over many people’s heads. This review will focus less on the music and more on the concept and lyrics of the album. I consider “The Downward Spiral” to be in my top 5 favorite albums of all time.

The album starts off with the aggressive “Mr. Self Destruct”. It acts as an introduction to the themes of the album. Musically it is a long cry from Reznor’s first album “Pretty Hate Machine”. Self Destruct is much more industrial, bordering on noise at many places. It ends with an abrasive avant-garde riff that foreshadows the dark feel of the whole album. The contrast of soft mellow passages and loud, noise-like passages is one that is used in many different songs on this album, representing the battle of man vs. machine (which will be explained more later). 

The real story begins with “Piggy”, which musically also is a strong contrast to the first song. It features a bass as the lead instrument, with various sound effects and textures layered over as the song continues. It also features a very interesting drum solo near the end of the song. The song describes a lover that is lost, which hurts the character deeply. It is the first time the chilling verse: “Nothing can stop me now/Because I don’t care anymore”, is used, it is used many times throughout the album.

The next song is “Heresy”, a much heavier song. Here Reznor proclaims that “God is dead”. In this song the main character blames all of his problems, and many of the world’s problems such as AIDS, on God. He says he would rather burn in hell then follow a God. 

Next up is “March of the Pigs”, one of Nine Inch Nail’s most popular songs. It is very fast, at 200+ bpm. While “Piggy” was about one person, “March of the Pigs” shows the character’s hate towards society in general (“I want to break it up/I want to smash it up/I want to fuck it up/I want to watch it come down”). This hatred prevents him from connecting personally with the world, isolating himself.

While “March of the Pigs” is popular, “Closer” is by far the most popular Nine Inch Nails song released. it features a simple drum beat, a grooving bass line and sexually explicit lyrics (it will be forever known for the line “I want to fuck you like an animal”). It also, however, is a very important song to the story. The song describes the character’s obsession. His obsession is that he will do anything for control. He feels that sex is the ultimate form of control, as it is completely taking over somebody else. Because of this, he will do anything for it. His whole reason for staying alive is to have control over someone else, hence the line “you are the reason I stay alive”. The ending notes of this song will return in the song “The Downward Spiral”, suggesting that this obsession is what in the end will destroy him, tying back to the theme of “Mr. Self Destruct”.

As the song “Piggy” described, the character’s lover will no longer submit herself to him. Because of this, he decides to direct all of his rage and hate towards God.  ”Ruiner” acts a direct condemning of God, and everything that it has done. The character decides that the lies of God is the root of his problem, and attempts to overthrow him. The song falls apart into a guitar solo that shows that the man is now free. As “Heresy” foreshadowed, God is dead (at least in the mind of the character). The line “Nothing can stop me now” returns, much stronger than it was whimpered in “Piggy”. 

But Reznor is cut off mid-sentence and “The Becoming” begins. Overthrowing God did not stop the main source of his problems, which is himself. He has been deceiving himself the whole time. The music becomes very mechanical, the sound of indifference. Since God has been overthrown, there is no human morals left. This brings up the new theme for the rest of the album, the mechanical side of indifference that was created when God was overthrown versus the small amount of humanity left inside of him. As the song says, “The me that you know, he doesn’t come around much anymore/That part of me isn’t here anymore”. However the song suddenly cuts to an acoustic breakdown and Reznor starts softly singing, showing that the human side is not completely gone. But just as suddenly as it began, the mechanical side takes control once again.

The next song, “I Do Not Want This”, is a battle between the human and mechanical sides of the character, as is well illustrated by the music. It frequently jumps between soft pianos and heavy machinery as Reznor switches between soft whispering and near screaming to illustrate the dialogue. As the end of the song approaches it is clear that the human side is losing the battle. The mechanical once again describes it’s obsession with control as it pronounces it’s new goal; “I want to know everything/I want to be everywhere/I want to fuck everyone in the world/I want to do something that matters”.

If you thought “Closer” was sexual, then you haven’t listened to “Big Man with a Gun”, which is essentially one long phallic metaphor. His obsession with control, and therefore sex, is blatantly obvious here. He no longer sees other people as humans, they are merely “pigs” to him now, just as they were the “pigs” of God.

The violent, mechanical music and yelling of “Big Man with a Gun” suddenly stops and the heartbreaking “A Warm Place” begins; a soft, almost ambient instrumental piece that acts as the turning point of the album. It is tranquil and honestly a beautiful song. The human character realizes his whole life has been spent inflicting pain on others. He also realizes that there is one way to escape and defeat the mechanical voice: death.

The ambience of “A Warm Places” fades into the chilling sound effects of “Eraser”, the first half of which is instrumental. Near the end of the song, he describes his destructive nature (“Need you/dream you/taste you/fuck you/use you/scar you/break you”), before pleading for someone to end his life (“lose me/hate me/smash me/erase me/kill me”). The song ends with him hauntingly screaming the last line, showing that he is not yet ready to take his own life.

Following “Eraser” is “Reptile”. The character can’t quite bring himself to pull the trigger, so he tries to find a way out. He tries to find someone who has become as indifferent as him, which comes to him in the form of a prostitute. However the cold indifference inside of her only causes him to see it within himself. Because of this, his search for a way out only causes him further disgust with himself. This is the final step in the “downward spiral”, the character has now realized that he must pull the trigger if he is to escape.

“The Downward Spiral” opens with the same notes used in “Closer”, establishing the link between the two, illustrating how the man’s destructive obsession with control has led him to where he his. The mechanical voice describes the scene, “He put the gun to his face/…so much blood for such a tiny little hole/…problems have solutions/a lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash”. As the scene is being described, the human voice lets out a bloodcurdling scream that lasts for the rest of the song, and the two sides of the character die together.

…or not? The song “Hurt” opens up and it is the only song on the album that does not feature any of the mechanical music, it is simply the human voice reflecting on everything that has occurred with a sole piano accompanying him, and textures in the background. “I hurt myself today” he confesses. He also finally gives up his obsession with control, and offers himself up to anybody who will accept him (“you could have it all”). However at the end of the last verse, the whole song comes crashing down into noisy static that goes on for the last minute of the album. Somehow the human side has managed to survive, but it is still plagued with problems. Reznor has said that the 1999 album “The Fragile” is a direct continuation of the story of “The Downward Spiral”, so the end of “Hurt” is almost a sort of cliffhanger. However, taken in the context of the album, it is a sort of “happy ending”, though this final confession and apology occurs after so much pain has been caused.

At the time, however, people did not know that it was a cliffhanger. The casual fan had no idea, but Reznor said multiple times in interviews that this album was a reflection of what he had been feeling lately. This caused fear to spread amongst the hardcore NIN fans. The suicide of Kurt Cobain occured during this time period, and some people were afraid that “The Downward Spiral” was Reznor’s suicide note to the world. Indeed, later in his life Trent said that he was going down his own downward spiral. However this post is already 1500+ words, so I’ll continue both the fictional story described in the album and Trent’s personal life in my review of “The Fragile” which I’m sure will pop up within the next few months.

Track listing:

1. Mr. Self Destruct
2. Piggy
3. Heresy
4. March of the Pigs
5. Closer
6. Ruiner
7. The Becoming
8. I Do Not Want This
9. Big Man with a Gun
10. A Warm Place
11. Eraser
12. Reptile
13. The Downward Spiral
14. Hurt

Obviously this album is a 5/5. No other album comes close to the emotional impact this album can have. It’s not my all time favorite, but it’s easily my top 5.  

—–

In the coming months we have a live Between the Buried and Me album coming out, some live Liquid Tension Experiment, live Dream Theater and a new Metallica album so I’ll definitely be writing more reviews. And I’ll get around to “The Fragile” sometime too, as well as all my favorite albums.

And I’m working on my solo stuff, by the end of August I should be releasing something. This is a helluva long post, so apologies =)

Song: Wish

Image will lead you to DVD reviews on Amazon.com

Tudo começou na segunda metade da década de 80, quando após gravar uma demo como tecladista, o músico conseguiu assinar seu primeiro contrato, com a TVT Records. Em 1989, faz sua estréia com o polêmico “Pretty Hate Machine”, um álbum com letras pesadas e produção idem. A faixa “Head Like a Hole” tornou-se ‘hit’ e o trabalho chegou a atingir a marca de 1 milhão de cópias vendidas. Deve-se a isso também o fato de o vocalista ter ficado em turnê por 3 anos divulgando o ‘debut’, abrindo para os Guns n´Roses e particpando do Lollapalooza.

O EP “Broken” chegou em 1992 e mostrava nitidamente a evolução de Reznor como compositor. O destaque foi “Happiness In Slavery”, que ganhou um videoclipe bastante executado. A participação do guitarrista Andrew Belew enriqueceu ainda mais o som, mas ainda não era o suficiente.

Foi quando, dois anos depois, saiu “The Downward Spiral”, o disco que realmente colocou o Nine Inch Nails na mídia de todo o mundo. Primeiro, porque o trabalho foi feito na casa onde o ‘serial killer’ Charles Manson havia assassinado a atriz Sharon Tate. Mas foi a qualidade indiscutível de “The Downward Spiral” que o colocou na segunda posição das paradas da Billboard. Logo após o lançamento, Trent compôs as trilhas sonoras dos filmes “Assassinos por Natureza”, de Oliver Stone e de “O Corvo”.

Após todo esse sucesso, o número de fãs da banda aumentou consideravelmente, mas para o azar deles, tiveram que esperar 5 anos até o lançamento de algum material inédito do Nine Inch Nails. Só em 1999 chega “Fragile”, um CD duplo que ocupou o primeiro lugar entre os mais vendidos nos EUA, rendendo platina dupla e o título de melhor álbum do ano por diversas publicações especializadas. Trent Reznor já era considerado uma espécie de guru da música industrial, do caos. Afinal, além de tudo, foi ele quem produziu e nos apresentou Marilyn Manson.

Em 2002, saiu o ao vivo “And All That Could Have Been”, gravado durante a turnê norte-americana de “Fragile”, e que trazia os maiores sucessos do Nine Inch Nails como “March Of The Pigs”, “The Day The World Went Way” e “Hurt”. Esse trabalho foi lançado também em formato DVD.

Discografia:

Pretty Hate Machine
Ano de lançamento: 1989

The Downward Spiral
Ano de lançamento: 1994

Fragile, The
Ano de lançamento: 1999

And All That Could Have Been
Ano de lançamento: 2002

Year Zero
Ano de lançamento: 2007

Curiosidades:

A banda colocou seu novo trabalho ‘The Slip’, disponível para download completo e gratuito, no seu site oficial, anteriormente foi lançado o ábum ‘Ghost I-IV‘, online em março, onde os fãs escolhiam quanto pagar para fazer o download.

A música Hurt do NIN foi regravada por Johnny Cash praticamente no seu leito de morte e se encontra em seu ultimo album “A Hundred Highways”

Site oficial: http://www.nin.com/

by ABIDU