Album of the Month: The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
Tracklist:
Mr. Self-Destruct
Piggy
Heresy
March of the Pigs
Closer
Ruiner
The Becoming
I Do Not Want This
Big Man With a Gun
A Warm Place
Eraser
Reptile
The Downward Spiral
Hurt
Heady, misanthropic, sexual, self-deprecating, and desperate. Nine Inch Nails were one of the many retrospectively confusing breakouts of the 1990's. They built off of Ministry's dark and heavy industrial experiments, making a patchwork of the alternative underground with elements of EDM and noise rock. Their debut, Pretty Hate Machine, was a moderate success-- ergo a blow-out for such an album in 1989. And it wasn't until 1994 that a full follow-up was released with The Downward Spiral.
I've been somewhat of a fan of this band for bordering on a decade, but for the longest time I never quite understood why this album was lauded as much as it is. And it wasn't until I got my first job and spent hours listening to the record over and over again that I fully understood.
The Downward Spiral is not unique in being angsty and dark, that's just about what defined '90s alternative after all. But what this album does that few others can is to sound not just genuine or honest, but to match the intensity of the music with the tone. Soundgarden's soundscapes are too rooted in rock and metal's heritage to unnerve and Nirvana- while angsty- were never really aggressive. Alice in Chains could absolutely meet the pure downtrodden nature of this record, but they never pushed it over the line, never went too far. This album goes way too fucking far.
The Downward Spiral is genuinely eerie, right on the edge of losing control, it feels dangerous. In tone this album feels closer to the likes of Leviathan's Tenth Sub Level of Suicide or other Depressive-Suicidal Black Metal. It hates itself, its creator, and the listener, uniformly and unilaterally. The Downward Spiral doesn't exist for your listening pleasure. The album is an exercise in excising demons and working out long-rooted emotions. It's a mental breakdown, crisis, apocalypse put to music.
It's for this that Trent Reznor has taken criticism; for his lyrics being over-the-top in their self-loathing, depression, and suicidal nature. Reviewers have taken the piss out of the band's music because of lines like this from "The Becoming":
"The me that you know, he used to have feelings. But the blood has stopped pumping and he is left to decay"
But on this record Reznor isn't comedic or satirical with his angst like Kurt Cobain, he's not self-aggrandizing like Billy Corgan, not outward with his anger like Maynard Keenan or Zach de la Rocha, and he isn't metaphorical, subtle, or reflective like Chris Cornell, Layne Staley, or Jerry Cantrell. Instead, The Downward Spiral is purely single-minded and efficient. Subtlety isn't a priority, Reznor will title a song "Eraser", one about destroying and wishing to be destroyed. One where he will scream "kill me" repeatedly because of course, he's writing of suicide.
As a concept album The Downward Spiral is in ways very similar to Pink Floyd's The Wall, even in the title. The Wall is at its core about a man building a wall between himself and those around him, and that distinction then being torn from him. The Downward Spiral is about constant use and abuse, how losing control of yourself only carries you further and further down the spiral. This directness though is not matched with theatrics or drama. The Downward Spiral, while varied in its sound, has no patience for narrative arcs or motifs. "Mr. Self-Destruct" begins the album with a crisis over vices, control and self-control. Our "protagonist" (if you want to phrase it in such a way) is corrupted, beaten, bruised, and angry. The whole remainder of the record details the aftereffects. Relationships are destroyed, self-worth crumbles, revelations are had but the direction is constant. Always down.
Matching this bleak vision of human psyche, will, and worth is a frenetic and hectic layering of guitar so distorted it's blurry, vocals so rough they're bestial, and electronic-industrial percussion that sound like collapsing machinery. "Mr. Self-Destruct" opens the album on pure nihilistic aggression and fury, it's the catalyst of the album, a microcosm of all its elements. The opening percussion (?) sound like gunshots, before evolving into the unrelenting, punching drum part. Reznor's voice is matched with wool-blanket fuzzy synths making his vocals even more unintelligible, and both are accentuated by the clattering, wickedly fast percussion. But this doesn't last forever as the song suddenly pairs down to let Reznor croon out his self-deprecating lyrics over simple, depressive instrumentals.
Large parts of the album are driven, intro-ed, or accentuated with really interesting and memorable synths parts. This is unsurprising for an industrial rock album, but I single them out because there's a huge variety of sounds and tones that they express. On "Big Man With a Gun" they're wide and reverberating, making the song feel more claustrophobic and dangerous. But on "A Warm Place" they're plunky and terse, doing the exact opposite to make the track feel much more personal and intimate.
These sorts of back-and-forth are present all throughout the track list. "Piggy" is repetitive and relatively quiet, being driven by a fuzzy, bouncy bass riff. But is then followed by "Heresy" and "March of the Pigs", both energetic and furious in equal measure. And on the other end of the album there's "Reptile", in all of its menacing and gritty glory, followed by the mellow title track and closing out on "Hurt".
These last two songs are a one-two punch that seem to only get more haunting and meaningful with every listen. "The Downward Spiral" opens with a perfectly bittersweet and beautiful melody; it sounds like how I imagine slowly slipping into a painless death feels. And then the song completely breaks apart; Reznor's screams are muffled by a low, whispering voice and a riff that sounds like it's being played on another floor. The quiet ambiance, something approaching closure, was shattered by the tortuous existence that this album belays. Finally, there's "Hurt", which likely needs no introduction. For it matches all its popularity and quiet introspection with total defeat, the failure to overcome the hate, anger, lust, and pain made out on "Mr. Self Destruct". Its dark, wiry instrumentation pairs with Reznor's weak vocal tone and by its end it devolves into unfettered chaos, death is followed not by new life but a re-entry into entropy.
コメント