Published on Apr 21, 1998
Trying to cover as many different artists as possible, sometimes
one forgets some of the moments that make you glad you love
music.
Reader Anne Parks recently signed our guestbook, and mentioned
that one of her favorite albums was Nine Inch Nails’
The Downward Spiral. I read that, and flashed back to a day
in 1992, when I discovered Trent Reznor for the first time. I had
just been sent
Broken to review, and had popped it into the Walkman as I
left the dorm to go to my first class. And the sonic assault on my
eardrums had me ripping the headphones off and asking, “Damn! Who
was that?!? That was incredible!”
Jump forward to 1994, when Reznor’s second full-length release
finally hit the stores, his first full-length album with a major
label. And while
The Downward Spiral contains some music which is just as
powerful as what I was first weaned on, it also shows that,
sometimes, smaller doses of Reznor are the best medicine.
Recruiting King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew to help on a few
tracks, and again working with Alan Moulder and Flood, Reznor
quickly welcomed you to his version of hell with “Mr. Self
Destruct,” a feedback-laden number that continued the path of
nihilism and despair that Reznor had started on back with “Head
Like A Hole”. But Reznor quickly shows that he’s just as capable of
delivering a message without the shouting and overamplification on
“Piggy”. (Pigs were an underlying theme of
The Downward Spiral – though I can’t explain why this is
so.)
But Nine Inch Nails really began to find their market with
“Closer,” a song in which Reznor croons to his beloved: “I wanna
fuck you like an animal / I want to feel you from the inside”. Such
an unlikely song to be Reznor’s first true “hit”, it thrust Reznor
into the limelight and into the world of hipness. (Another song
which didn’t get as much hype, “March Of The Pigs,” was just as
good, and reminded me a lot of the
Broken-era Nine Inch Nails.)
But Reznor would truly earn his stripes with the single “Hurt,”
another song which emphasized the ballad over noise, even though a
fair amount of ambient noise is in the background. Only problem is,
this song got so overplayed that I soon got sick of hearing it.
Four years after the album came out, hearing it isn’t as bad, but
when some stations played it every freaking hour, it makes you want
to go postal.
But the weakness of
The Downward Spiral is its own ambition. After being
silenced for so long, it seemed that Reznor wanted to say
everything he had meant to in the previous five years. And
eventually, the nonstop barrage on your ears gets to be a bit too
much. (This could explain why Reznor moved towards ballads
occasionally.) Some songs like “Ruiner” and “I Do Not Want This” do
stand out, but by the time you reach the title track near the end
of the album, you feel like Roberto Duran yelling “No mas” in the
boxing ring. In a sense, it’s almost as if Reznor runs out of gas
as he gets closer to the end.
Oh, don’t get me wrong,
The Downward Spiral is still very much an enjoyable listen.
But one wonders what would have happened, say, if Reznor had
chopped it into two albums. Quite possibly, some of the songs that
got lost in the synthesized haze would have moved closer to the
front, and have received more attention. Instead, Reznor just tried
a little too hard.
Nine Inch Nails fans, of course, will treat this release like
the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it’s definitely worth adding to your
collection. But just like you don’t eat the whole chocolate bar in
one gulp, it’s better to bite off bits of
The Downward Spiral at a time.