a lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash

Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral

As with so many people, The Downward Spiral was my introduction to Nine Inch Nails. I was already listening to industrial music, having long been a fan of Ministry, and this was a near-total reinvention of the genre. “Mr. Self Destruct” blasting out of the gate at the start of the album (literally with a series of gunshots, from Rise of the Triad, if memory serves) is nitro-fueled industrial, a rolling wash of percussion, like rickety whirring machines in overdrive more than anything actually musical, two fuzzed-out atonal notes on guitar and Reznor shouting until the whole song is entirely consumed by the noise of the machinery. I can still recall being completely blown away by this opening the first time I put the album on. It is so audacious and portentous, a track with total confidence that this album is going to change the industrial landscape, the aural equivalent of Eraserhead.

People talk a lot about Nine Inch Nails being very much overridden with angst, but as far as angst goes, this is a particularly virulent strain on Downward Spiral, more akin to misanthropy, full of disgust, fear and loathing. “Piggy” (a Lord of the Flies reference), with its messy, jagged production around a simple bassline, is devoid of anguish and angst, a paean to giving up (‘nothing can stop me now because I don’t care anymore’).

Fans of Pretty Hate Machine found the classic synthesizer-based industrial/dance of that album largely absent from Downward Spiral, except for “Heresy”, which harkens back to it with its synthesizers but demolishes it with clattering chains and fiery guitars, Reznor shrieking that God is dead (interesting after the extensive religion-baiting of Hate Machine – Reznor uses this single song as a dismissal of all that album’s themes with a new message of pure nihilism – ‘God is dead and no one cares, if there is a hell I’ll see you there’). “March of the Pigs” also revisits the synthesizer sound in the chorus, but wedged in between savage blasting drums and guitar and incongruous tender piano pieces.

Most of the attention this album garnered upon release was around “Closer”, and its central ‘I wanna fuck you like an animal’ line over the beats like a sick heartbeat (starting to skip in the second verse) and that lurid, sleazy bass and all manner of uncomfortable sound effects, including the album’s recurring horror movie strings until it finally all collapses into the sickly closing piano, leading with a bang directly into the second phase of the album with “Ruiner” which piles more and more distortion and noise onto itself until the explosive, revelatory horn section in the chorus amidst the klaxons and steam-hammer bursts.

This leads to “The Becoming”, the key to the whole album, a melange of acoustic guitar, voices wailing in fear and pain, clanking machinery with ever-growing volume. It is the signpost of the endgame, the last curve of the downward spiral as the last of the main character’s humanity rots away. “I Do Not Want This” shows the last few signs of struggle before the grim final acceptance, desperately crying ‘I want to do something that matters’. Then the mindless violence of “Big Man with a Gun” and the moment of dying peace and beauty with the Eno-inspired instrumental “A Warm Place”. “A Warm Place” is the one song uncluttered with noise and anger, a single oasis of serenity and it is genuinely beautiful and cleasing, a precursor to the epic beauty of the finale. Is is the death of the soul, the crushing out of human emotion.

“Eraser” has a slow but distinctly sharp and mechanized build back in of all the noise and machinery, which prepares for the lockstep cybernetic whir of “Reptile”, an epic of diseased hatefulness (the album’s longest track) and the breakdown of everything that led to it, leading to the title track, the end of the spiral, the character’s suicide, opening with an acoustic guitar echoing the sickly piano from before, now almost buried under the ugly buzzing of machines. The production is heavily compressed, a looped scream and the guitars and drums muffled as if recorded from a room away, with the voice intoning the ease of the suicide act, until the noise just breaks apart into the open, tape-damaged whir that underlies “Hurt”.

If there is one song that Nine Inch Nails will always be respected for, it is “Hurt”. One of Reznor’s most personal songs, and beautifully reinvented ten years later by Johnny Cash, it is the revelatory finale to The Downward Spiral, developing out of sickness and noise to a moment of actual self-recognition and clarity, passionate and downcast. It is the summation of the spiral, like the final line of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, it is the sign on the door reading ‘this is not an exit’ leaving behind an uneasy message that you are left to interpret on your own.

The Downward Spiral is one of the great, landmark albums of the nineties. I can hardly believe it’s been thirteen years.

Perfect => *****

~ by jshopa on July 8, 2008.