The Downward Spiral

The Downward Spiral
Studio album by Nine Inch Nails
Released	March 8, 1994
Recorded	1993-1994 Le Pig (Beverly Hills, California) Record Plant Studios, A&M Studios (Los Angeles, California)
Genre	Industrial rock, industrial metal
Length	65:02
Label	Nothing/Interscope – HALO 8
Producer	Trent Reznor, Flood
Nine Inch Nails chronology
Pretty Hate Machine (1989) The Downward Spiral (1994) The Fragile (1999)
Singles from The Downward Spiral
"March of the Pigs" Released: February 25, 1994 "Closer" Released: May 30, 1994

The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on March 8, 1994, by Interscope Records. It is a concept album detailing the destruction of a man, from the beginning of his "downward spiral" to his climactic attempt at suicide. The Downward Spiral features elements of industrial rock, techno, and heavy metal music, in contrast to the dance-influenced Pretty Hate Machine (1989).^[1]

The album was a major commercial success that established Nine Inch Nails as a reputable force in the 1990s music scene, particularly following the release of the single "Closer" and its controversial video. It has been widely regarded by music critics as Nine Inch Nails' best work.^[2][3][4]

Background

Reznor has discussed the background and inspiration behind the album:

The idea behind the album is of someone who sheds everything around them to a potential nothingness, but through career, religion, relationship, belief and so on. It's less muscle-flexing, though when I started it I didn't know what I wanted it to sound like. I knew I didn't want to be a full metal album, so I tried to address the issue of restraint. It was a long process.^[5]

Thematically I wanted to explore the idea of somebody who systematically throws or uncovers every layer of what he's surrounded with, comfort-wise, from personal relationships to religion to questioning the whole situation. Someone dissecting his own ability to relate to other people or to have anything to believe in...With The Downward Spiral I tried to make a record that had full range, rather than a real guitar-based record or a real synth-based record. I tried to make it something that opened the palate for NIN, so we don't get pigeon-holed. It was a conscious effort to focus more on texture and space, rather than bludgeoning you over the head for an hour with a guitar.^[6]

I was really into electronic music at the time. David Bowie's Low was probably the single greatest influence on The Downward Spiral for me. I got into Bowie in the Scary Monsters era, then I picked up Low and instantly fell for it. I related to it on a song-writing level, a mood level, and on a song-structure level...I like working within the framework of accessibility, and songs of course, but I also like things that are more experimental and instrumental, maybe.^[7]

Recording

To record the album, Reznor rented the house located at 10050 Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, California where actress Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969. Reznor built a studio space in the house which he named Le Pig, after the message that was scrawled on the front door with Tate's blood by her murderers. Reznor told Entertainment Weekly that despite the notoriety attached to the house, he chose to record there because, "I looked at a lot of places, and this just happened to be the one I liked most." Reznor moved out of the house in December 1993, after he said "there was too much history in that house for me to handle." After the album's recording, Reznor moved out and the house was demolished shortly thereafter.^[8] Reznor made a statement about working in the Tate house during a 1997 interview with Rolling Stone:

While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: 'Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house?' For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred.' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, 'Fuck Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?^[9]

Reznor set out to make an album that was a departure from the 1992 Broken EP, emphasizing "mood, texture, restraint and subtlety."^[10] He brought in a number of guest performers to record, including former Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins and progressive rock guitarist Adrian Belew.^[10] Perkins played a number of drum parts that were recorded live in the studio; these tracks were subsequently rendered into looped samples which were manipulated electronically. Reznor took a similar approach to recording guitar parts. Reznor would record 20 to 25-minute long sessions of himself playing guitar on a hard disc recorder with a Studio Vision sequencer, then would cut out parts of the recording he found interesting for later use. Reznor said, "99 percent of the stuff we do–even vocals–is recorded into the computer first. We get an arrangement together and then dump it to tape." ^[11]

Reznor said in 1995, "There was another song that I didn't put on there called 'Just Do It.' It was a very dangerously self-destructive, silly little snippet. You know, 'If you're going to kill yourself, just do it, nobody cares at all.' But [The Downward Spiral co-producer] Flood freaked out and said, 'No, you've gone too far. I don't want to be involved in that'."^[12]

Lyrics

There are numerous layers of metaphors that are present throughout the album, which leaves it open to wide interpretation. The album relays many concepts of Nihilism, such as the chorus line in "Heresy," which exclaims: "Your god is dead/And no one cares. If there is a hell/I'll see you there." As a whole, The Downward Spiral is defined by Nietzschean concepts and a prominent theme of existentialism. It is a concept album in which the overarching plot follows the protagonist moving through his own "Downward Spiral", dealing with religion, dehumanization, violence, disease, society, drugs, sex, and finally suicide. This character can be understood as a representation of Reznor himself:

...it was during that tour (Self-Destruct) that problems started to arise. Prior to that I would have considered myself pretty normal. With The Downward Spiral, I can remember where I was in my head, what I was thinking, and I can remember writing that record, and the mindset. This record that was about an extension of me, became the truth fulfilling itself.^[13]

Packaging

Artwork and sketches for The Downward Spiral, "Closer" and "March of the Pigs" by Russell Mills were displayed at the Glasgow School of Art. Mills explained the ideas and materials that made up the painting (titled "Wound") that was used for the cover:

I had been thinking about making works that dealt with layers, physically, materially and conceptually. I wanted to produce works that were about both exposure and revealing and at the same dealt with closure and covering. Given the nature of the lyrics and the power of the music I was working with, I felt justified in attempting to make works that alluded to the apparently contradictory imagery of pain and healing. I wanted to make beautiful surfaces that partially revealed the visceral rawness of open wounds beneath. The mixed media work 'Wound' was the first piece I tackled in this vein (no pun intended) and it became the cover of the album. It is made of plaster, acrylics, oils, rusted metals, insects, moths, blood (mine), wax, varnishes, and surgical bandaging on a wooden panel.^[14]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[15]
Blender	[16]
Chicago Tribune	[17]
Entertainment Weekly	(B+)[18]
Los Angeles Times	[19]
Pitchfork Media	(8.3/10)[20]
PopMatters	(9/10)[21]
Rolling Stone	[22]
Sputnikmusic	[23]
USA Today	[24]

The Downward Spiral was released in March 1994. The album debuted the following week at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.^[25] The album was well-received by critics. Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote, "Every instrument, acoustic or synthetic, seems tuned to create the maximum aural abrasion," Pareles asserted that unlike other electro-industrial groups like Ministry and Nitzer Ebb, "Reznor writes full-fledged tunes; he knows his way around melodic hooks, not just riffs. And while purists accuse him of selling out their insular genres, he actually trumps them; the music is no less transgressive, and possibly more so, because it sticks in the ear."^[26] Robert Christgau said that, musically, the album was comparable to "Heironymus Bosch as postindustrial atheist", but lyrically, more closely resembled "Transformers as kiddie porn."^[27] Rolling Stone awarded the album four out of five stars; reviewer Jonathan Gold praised the album as "music that pins playback levels far into the red", and concluded, "The Downward Spiral is music the blade runner might throw down to: low-tech futurism that rocks."^[28] Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+; reviewer Tom Sinclair wrote, "Reznor's pet topics (sex, power, S&M, hatred, transcendence) are all here, wrapped in hooks that hit your psyche with the force of a blowtorch."^[29]

To date, The Downward Spiral has sold over four million copies.^[30] The album was ranked at number 25 in Spin's "100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005"; Spin also ranked it 11th on their "Top 90 Albums of the 90's"; in 2010 the magazine placed the album 10th on their "125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years" list.^[31] Blender named it the 80th Greatest American Album. It was ranked #488 in the book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time by Martin Popoff. In 2001 Q named The Downward Spiral as one of the 50 Heaviest Albums Of All Time.^[32] In 2003, the album was ranked number 200 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.^[33] The Downward Spiral was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

On August 23, 2009 at Webster Hall, Nine Inch Nails played the album in its entirety for the first time ever.^[34][35]

Reissues

The Downward Spiral was re-released in 2004 to celebrate its tenth anniversary. It is available in two versions: as a 2-disc SACD hybrid set and in DualDisc format (DVD-A on one side and CD on the reverse). The SACD version is known as The Downward Spiral: Deluxe Edition and the DualDisc version as The Downward Spiral: DualDisc.

On its deluxe edition, the SACD version consists of two discs. Disc one is a CD/SACD hybrid. It has the original album, digitally remastered, in SACD 5.1 surround and SACD stereo on one layer (only playable in SACD players), and regular CD stereo on the other layer (playable in normal CD players). Disc two consists of b-sides, soundtrack contributions, and previously-unreleased demos presented in regular CD stereo. This version is labeled Halo Eight DE.

On its DualDisc re-release, the CD-compatible side contains the digitally remastered original album, which is playable on regular CD players. This is a North American release (DVD Region 1) and is labeled Halo Eight DVD-A. The DVD side contains digitally remastered, 5.1 surround and stereo version of the original tracks, album artwork viewable as a slideshow on DVD-Video players and plays with the music in DVD-A players, music videos of "Closer" (available in 5.1 surround and stereo), "March of the Pigs" (stereo), and "Hurt" (stereo), and a discography that includes selected bits of music from each NIN album (starting with Broken) that run about a minute each.

Universal chose, without consulting Reznor, to re-release the vinyl edition of The Downward Spiral as a part of their Back to Black collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of vinyl. The vinyl was released on September 23, 2008, and has the same artwork and track listing as the original 1994 release. On the free streaming site remix.nin.com, Reznor posted unmastered instrumental versions of the entire album (with the exceptions of "Ruiner" and "Big Man with a Gun").

Controversy

Its emphasis on transgressive themes has made The Downward Spiral's lyrics vulnerable to attack from American social conservatives. Sen. Bob Dole, then head of the Republican Party, sharply criticized Time Warner after a meeting between Michael J. Fuchs (head of the Warner Music Group), William Bennett, and C. Delores Tucker, at which Tucker and Bennett demanded that Fuchs read lyrics from NIN's "Big Man with a Gun" because the politician thought the lyrics were an attack on the US Government.^[36] Reznor claimed that the lyrics had nothing to do with politics:

The record was nearing completion. I had written those lyrics pretty quickly and I didn't know if I was going to use them or not. To me, Downward Spiral builds to a certain degree of madness, then it changes. That would be the last stage of delirium. So the original point of 'Big Man with a Gun' was madness. But it was also making fun of the whole misogynistic gangsta-rap bullshit. [...] I listen to a lot of it, and I enjoy it. But I could do without the degree of misogyny and hatred of women and abuse. Then, my song got misinterpreted as exactly that. It was probably a lack of being able to write. I've been taken out of context, and it's ridiculous.^[37]

Robert Bork also repeatedly referenced "Big Man with a Gun" in his book Slouching Toward Gomorrah as evidence of a cultural decline. The book incorrectly states that it is a rap song.^[38] In 2009, Apple rejected the Nine Inch Nails application for the iPhone due to objectionable content in The Downward Spiral.^[39]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Trent Reznor. 

• Notes
  • Japanese pressings contain a bonus track, the Joy Division cover "Dead Souls", originally released on The Crow original soundtrack.^[40][41]
  • The opening sounds of "Mr Self Destruct" are a sample from the film THX 1138 in which a man is being beaten by a prison guard.^[42]
  • The frantic drumming on the end of "Piggy" is courtesy of Reznor himself. This is currently his first and only attempt at live drumming on a record, and one of the few "live" drum performances on the album. Reznor stated that the recording was from him testing the microphone setup in studio, but he liked the sound too much not to include it.^[43]
  • The drum track for "Closer" features a heavily modified bass drum sample from the Iggy Pop song "Nightclubbing" from his album The Idiot.
  • The loop of screaming voices heard at the beginning of "The Becoming" is a sample from the film Robot Jox.
  • The title track "The Downward Spiral", after the intro, has an elongated scream; this scream is actually an edited Wilhelm scream.
  • The sample at the beginning of "Big Man With A Gun" comes from a studio-altered recording of a porn star having an orgasm. According to the album booklet, this "sample" is titled "Steakhouse" and is credited to Tommy Lee.
  • The main keyboard track in "A Warm Place" is very similar to David Bowie's "Crystal Japan".
  • The beginning of "Eraser" contains a sound often referred to as "straw blowing." This is the sound of somebody blowing air through a saxophone while manipulating the keys, but not producing any tones.
  • The sampled clanks at the beginning of "Reptile" can be heard in the film Leviathan.
  • The strange sobbing sound in "Reptile" (at 5:06) originates from the 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Deluxe edition

Disc one of the album's deluxe edition re-release is identical to the original version, although 1 dB louder mix overall, track anomalies are fixed (sounds from previous tracks creeping up on start of tracks), and it includes SACD layer. Its second bonus disc is a collection of remixes and b-sides. The last three tracks on the bonus disc are previously unreleased demo recordings from the original album.^[44]

Personnel

Chart history

Notes

References

• Nathan Brackett, Christian Hoard (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-74320-169-8. 

External links

• The Downward Spiral at Discogs
• Album Review — By AbsolutePunk
• Album Review — By Alternative Press
• Album Review — By Time
• Halo 8 at NIN Collector
• Halo 8 at NinWiki.com