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Take a man. A tormented and lonely man. Desperately, claustrophobically, imprisoned in the self-destructive vortex of his own mind, constantly clashing with his fears, his fixations, his ghosts. Fill this man with various psychotropic substances and lock him in a ghostly American villa, the scene of a bloody massacre some years ago, with his musical instruments and his computers.
If you add that this man is one of the most ingenious musicians to ever walk our soil, you have one of the best albums of the '90s (but perhaps that's an understatement). Never again has the genius of Trent Reznor reached the heights he achieved with "The Downward Spiral"; a totally schizoid album that perfectly paints distorted and perverse madness on razor-sharp sound canvases. The opening act of the album is "Mr. Self Destruct", starting with an incredibly effective sample of a man being tortured (or torturing himself?), then launching into a ferociously intense verse, continuing with a lethal chorus, and calming down with a hypnotic and truly unsettling break; Reznor's feeble and wicked voice whispering "you let me do this to you... I am an exit". After the delirious guitar fabric that closes the opener, there's "Piggy", a mid-tempo revolving around a simple but highly effective bass line, ending in a percussive noise-stamped flourish. It is followed by the blasphemous invective of Heresy, an angry piece that echoes and dresses in a decidedly heavier version certain synth-pop of the 80s influence, in which Trent rails against God, screaming his abandonment of faith. The anger continues to flow into the next track "March Of The Pigs”.
But it is when the stereo reaches track number 5 that the album takes its first truly unstoppable surge: if the idea of sex had to be conveyed in its rawest and most physical sense in a song, Trent Reznor succeeded perfectly. Closer is not simply a song: it is the fiery embrace of two lovers, it is irresistible lust in the atmosphere, it is intercourse, desperate coitus. An intensely physical connection, unstoppable. The frantic union of two inseparable bodies. The joy of purely physical orgasm, celestial (I wanna fuck you like an animal/ I wanna feel you from the inside... You get me closer to God). Musically, the piece stands on a very funky bass synth, heavily supported by rock-solid keyboard walls and distorted progressions. It evolves into an explosive crescendo, reaching a finale that truly sounds like the sonic resolution of an orgasmic explosion. "Ruiner", with its steady tempo, introduces us to another gem of the album, "The Becoming", a sort of manifesto of a split personality: it perfectly sets furious thrashy parts (complete with screams) against relaxed acoustic moments. The man is in crisis. His awareness is driving him to madness.
Madness, now uncontrollable, explodes in "I Do Not Want This" (don't you tell me how I feel, you don't know just how I feel), in the brief "Big man with a gun", and then unexpectedly fades into "A Warm Place", an ambient ballad with a vaguely Bowie-like flavor. From there, the statement of intent of "Eraser", where the man in the grip of his self-destruction expresses himself mechanically, and accepts the inevitability of his contorted fate. (need you... fuck you... use you, but above all, kill me, kill me, kill me). Another anthem to the dirtiest and most visceral lust is "Reptile", where our Trent looks at his love as a disease and his beloved as the germ that triggers the pathology. Accompanied by a sinuous background, a bass that truly slinks like a reptile. And crawling, we find pure resignation and blind pain. "He couldn't believe how easy it was, he put the gun into his face... bang". After the fires of passion, of anger; after the storm of uncontrolled and unhealthy emotions... resignation. Solitude. Self-abandonment. All at the bottom of the "Downward spiral". The nothingness of self increases as you spiral downward. Further and further down. The last breath is exhaled with that authentic gem that is "Hurt". A delicate acoustic ballad that closes the album and conveys everything that this man can have inside.
Hurting oneself to live. Hurting oneself to survive. Pain is life. Life is pain, when love has taken everything from us.
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