Style: Industrial...?, ambient, noise, acoustic, really just NIN
Primary Emotions/Themes: Anger, angst, suicide, self loathing, regret
Thoughts: This is going to be a tough one for me. I've been listening to Nine Inch Nails for well over half my life at this point, and this was my introduction to them. The music on here has so many emotions attached to it over the years. So many memories. It's hard to look at this objectively... so I won't.
The Downward Spiral is a collection of songs that goes way beyond the sum of its parts. This album takes a multitude of genres and fuses them together in such a genius way that they transcend their individual contributions to create an album that is one of the best of the decade.
The album starts out with Mr. Self Destruct, a noisy anthem that sets the tone for what is to come. Harsh, yet catchy verse/chorus structures that can turn on a dime into something completely different. The song starts out incredibly noisy with overdriven guitars and shouted/whispered vocals. It's almost like someone or something is waiting to explode in an already violent arena.
The music increases in intensity until the midway point where everything drops out and a quiet instrumental takes over. This only lasts for a few seconds but its a pivotal moment of the song and the album as a whole. It lets the listener know that NIN is not afraid to try anything and everything - as long as it sounds good.
This is seen over and over again throughout the Downward Spiral. One song will be incredibly harsh and straight forward and the next will be incredibly soft and touching. The deep seeded slithering of Reptile is balanced out by the welcoming A Warm Place. For every Big Man With a Gun there is a Hurt. The album is balanced nearly to perfection, but not in a traditional sense.
With each section the album progresses towards the final chapter of title track and Hurt. Both of these songs show a character who is completely broken, driven to the point of suicide and self detest. Nothing matters anymore, the only exit is death. It's such a hopeless ending to the album that it's often hard for me to listen to all the way through.
The Downward Spiral is an album that needs to be taken in as a full album, at least for me. There are musical themes that act as leitmotifs throughout (the end of Closer uses the same melody as the title track for example). For a young me this was a defining album, one that I got into even before metal. It was powerful back then, and it remains so to this day. Absolutely essential listening.
Written October 2nd 2023
No comments:
Post a Comment