1994 In Review: Nine Inch Nails - "The Downward Spiral"

Remembered by some as "the one with Closer on it", Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral is blatantly, shockingly more than its crass and silly hit single. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the album has a sense of its scope, but even some fans have yet to discover all it has to offer.

Probably one of the most masterfully layered recordings ever created, The Downward Spiral is an experimental audio surgery performed with equal parts expert precision and brute force. It's so sonically dense, I was able to hear things on the hundredth spin I hadn't noticed on the first 99. And the production is near perfection. I've gone on record (here, if you care to read it) as saying that this album is "the pinnacle of digital recording", and I stick by it. Loud without going to the Loudness Wars, reflective and full of dynamic range when it needs to breathe, The Downward Spiral is (in my opinion) the most rewarding sonic experience the compact disc format ever gave us.

Of course, one can't talk about the album properly without delving a bit into its environment and subject matter. Recorded at a Los Angeles home that just so happened to be the site of a Manson (Charles, not Marilyn) family murder, there's a palpable tension already present before the first notes ring out. Then, there's Trent Reznor's no longer budding addictions; he would later strike down his demons, but on The Downward Spiral they've got him utterly and completely pinned.

Nowhere does this hit harder than on closing track/manifestation Hurt. A truly haunted and disparaging dirge, it sees Reznor singing his own eulogy. His voice is weak, the melody vulnerable; an album's last track has never sounded so final. And yet, even in this state of utter fragility, the album's most poignant moment; as Reznor admits defeat, and regret ("If I could start again / A million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way"), three last, dissonant chords strike out. It's the audio equivalent of rigor mortis, and it's impossible to avoid its power.

Truly, there's very little joy or pain to be felt on The Downward Spiral; it's a cold, numb slab of apathetic self-destruction, a hopeless case who uses sex and self-harm as proof of humanity while its last traces fall away. The Reznor here has become a monster, and knows it; the only choice he has left is to document his loss of control as a cautionary tale for those who would dare to follow him down.

March 8, 1994 • Interscope

Highlights March of the Pigs • Reptile • Hurt