Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral

THE REVIEW

Am I asleep, or perhaps I'm awake, or maybe I've simply gone mad and am reading what’s written in my soul as if it were a chaotic book… I hear a reverberation in the hole where my head should be, a blow, like a hammer breaking my eardrums, and a voice that doesn’t belong to me… or perhaps has always been hidden within me, controlling me like a puppet. It’s a cynical, cruel voice that sometimes hisses while at other times screams and pushes me to nullify myself… it is PAIN.

The flow of my thoughts accelerates… after all, this pain is what I have inside, it has grown like a plant, which I have watered every day with my rejection of a false world, for a trampled love, for a God that doesn’t exist… or maybe hates us and pushes us to HATE.
My anger swells like a wave, charging its strength to dent the rock of hypocrisy, indifference, ignorance... But like a wave; however strong my blow might be, it is I who crashes and is forced to retrace my steps, chewing on bitterness for the stupidity that blinds all those beings, more akin to PIGS now than men… and I don't know if this is a good thing.

Slowly every brake melts and my understanding expands; Every conditioning fades, my hidden desires resurface and my animal INSTINCT strengthens, bringing me closer to whatever it was that created us. Love, sex, violence… everything is more fleeting, everything is the opposite of everything, nothing can hurt me, nothing scares me… I am CHANGING. I am now empty, the self I was before is only a faded picture, with the last connection to reality I try to cling to love. …But it’s like walking on a mirror; too smooth not to slip off… where I find again that noise, which craves me, wants to swallow me… wants me DEAD.
I don’t want this, I cannot bear all this pain, all this suffering, all this ANGER. I would rather die than see evil, suffer evil, than do evil… But it’s too late, that thing now courses through my veins, like a slippery and insidious reptile, I am compromised, I am impure… I am ALONE.

My mind now travels madly, everything rushes by at an insane speed; memories, loves, ideals, friends… everything grazes and wounds me… .And then the impact. I am lying down, confused… Around me, only nothingness and DARKNESS… And then I regret not being like the others, not being blind, not being strong enough, or empty enough.
Now it’s too late, I have descended along the Downward Spiral of my mind; a silent well from which there is no return… If only I could start again, a million miles away, I would watch over myself… .I would find a way.

P.S. This is the last time I write with the stream of consciousness; it may be crazy, but I have never found an album that throws me into a whirlwind (“whirlwind” fits perfectly) of emotions like this. I hope I haven’t overflowed beyond the limits, but making a “normal review” of “The Downward Spiral” would have been like enjoying a plate of pasta using a pitchfork.