Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral

THE REVIEW

March 1994, a month like any other in a year like many... or maybe not, since one morning Trent Reznor got out of bed and wrote Closer. Why? What happened? Why, dear Trent, did you decide to create a piece that seems to have emerged from Area 51 and shows no signs of aging? There has been much talk about The Downward Spiral, a masterpiece that has indelibly defined Nine Inch Nails, but today it is finally possible to discuss it devoid of so many burdens, both adolescent and contextual. Without hormonal bombings or various emotional suggestions, I can analyze it in a detached way, just as the soul of the suicidal protagonist examines the "what ifs" in the concluding track, rightly consigning the album to history. In short, we already knew it was a masterpiece, that it would be so relevant 24 years later... not so much.

I wonder if Reznor was aware at the time that he had created an album with bulletproof glass against the harsh blows of time: I suspect that, given the prevailing obsessiveness of the work, he very much was. One of the most insidious traps of "rock" albums that make extensive use of electronics is precisely to expose the flank to obsolescence, and one needs to be very skilled to navigate a field that guarantees temporal immunity or even a legitimate retrospective recovery. We return to Closer, which, despite remaining the driving single and defining sound of the spiral, is today an unclassifiable beast that disturbs everyone: it is not dark and morbid enough to be an underground cult, too techno to be adored by rockers, but too putrid to be accepted by the Kraftwerk club, it doesn’t have the riffs to become a generational anthem, yet that text won’t leave your head. It is also shamelessly pop when you think about it, also demonstrating the musician's desire to please an easy listening subtext drowned in an aberrant context, between chilling screams, mechanical sounds, and continuous ingenious ideas. The album is a mad cauldron of sound resources that wink at antithetical worlds, apparently irreconcilable, a mistake. Electronic synths, psychotic riffs, drum machines, unexpected accelerations, ambient sessions worthy of a movie denote an unprecedented compositional sensitivity. In the same way, the vocals are free from every scheme, allowing the luxury of embracing ever-changing and kaleidoscopic stylistic formulas, from whispers to rhymed sessions. There are no rules (or maybe there are?).

Many, especially in industrial, have sought the ideal crossover between rock and electronic music, but almost no one had the intuition of The Downward Spiral in the process of contamination, namely the analysis of the implications and contrasts of the respective genres and their needs. This profound awareness and the willingness to go to the bottom of the convoluted issue are the main magic of the album, distancing it from any accusation of trend appropriation. To get into specifics: there is a dark side to the machine, a putrescent organic vein in the cleanliness of silicon, but at the same time, the human mind is increasingly alienated and mechanical. It is not irrelevant that The Downward Spiral is essentially a concept album, with recurring themes, even musical ones. Like the frequent emergence of a repeated note sequence in Closer, Heresy, and even the title track. An album that sounds like nothing else, the definitive manifesto of this wretched creature called humanity.