The Downward Spiral
| Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released on March 8, 1994, by Nothing Records and Interscope Records in the United States and by Island Records in Europe. It is a concept album detailing the destruction of a man from the beginning of his "downward spiral" to his death by suicide. The Downward Spiral features elements of industrial rock, techno and heavy metal music, in contrast to the band's synthpop-influenced debut album Pretty Hate Machine (1989), and was produced by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and Flood.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Revolver
On March 8th, 1994, Nine Inch Nails released The Downward Spiral, a landmark not just for Trent Reznor's career, but for hard, electronic-oriented music in general. Featuring harrowing and uncompromising tracks like "Mr. Self Destruct," "March of the Pigs," "Hurt" and "Closer," which managed the difficult feat of being addictively catchy while also being unbearably intense, the densely layered record has sold almost 4 million copies in the U.S. alone, and influenced just about every dark and edgy metal, hardcore and/or electronic act that came after it.
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Kerrang
Understandably then, Trent might be reluctant to tumble into The Downward Spiral ever again. Despite the artistic peaks that came as a result of facing down his army of demons, it’s testament to the album’s timeless sense of seething despair and fury that even 25 years on, its depth and darkness continues to haunt and resonate.
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U Discover
The Downward Spiral is an unflinching concept album that details falling down the rabbit hole of despair – a narrative as impressive as its genre-defying, era-defining music. With a willingness to embrace man’s internal conflict between spite and vulnerability; crippling feelings of isolation and helplessness; the futility of fighting anything when the world is an unmovable heap of crap versus the defiance of defeat (the repetition of the line “Nothing can stop me now” throughout the album pushes that front and centre), The Downward Spiral confronts those feelings we bottle up inside with all the subtlety of a roundhouse kick to the head.
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Loudwire
By March 8, 1994, Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails cohorts finally released The Downward Spiral. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, bested only by Soundgarden's Superunkown in its opening week.
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NIN
The Downward Spiral (also known as Halo 8) is Nine Inch Nails' second studio album, though it is largely considered the third major release after the Broken EP, which consisted of entirely new material. It was released on March 8, 1994. It is likely the most acclaimed and well-known of the band's discography, and is said to have brought "industrial" music to the mainstream.
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Billboard
With bleak cover art based on a painting called “Wound,” and songs about nihilism and self-abuse, “Spiral” was never an obvious contender for 50 Cent mashups and MTV omnipresence. But it nonetheless made Reznor - who at the time of its recording was reportedly in the depths of drug addiction – the decade’s antihero poster-boy, even landing him on Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential People” list in 1997.
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Ptchfork
Interscope takes further advantage of the holiday shopping blowout with this deluxe edition of yet another 90s alt-rock staple. Here's Trent Reznor's best-known (and most highly regarded) work, The Downward Spiral, bulked up to include Dolby 5.1 surround and SACD mixes, and an entire second disc's worth of B-sides, remixes and rarities.
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UCR
With The Downward Spiral, Reznor carried the band into the '90s with a new sense of purpose. The music was still industrial and still harsh – even more so, in fact. But alt-rock – spurred by Nirvana and now the biggest music to take over radio and record stores in years – was picking up more traction until it all bottomed out by 1997. So there's that too. More significantly, The Downward Spiral – with its hour-plus length, densely textured tracks and thematic links among the songs – was almost, gulp, a prog record at heart.
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Rolling Stone
Nine Inch Nails achieve a new kind of loud on The Downward Spiral: accessible hard-rock moves overlaid with a scrim of electronic racket, white noise, screams, the kind of blown-speaker rattle that seems to use the limitations of crappy stereo equipment the way that Hendrix riffed on the distortion that howled from overdriven Marshall stacks. It’s a new frontier in rock & roll: music that pins playback levels far into the red. You have only two options with this album: Play it too softly, or play it too loud. Rating: 4/5
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4 Degreez
The downward spiral is Reznor's most mature album to date and marks the culmination of the themes explored in the prior nine inch nails releases. Like the albums of many '70s art-rock bands, it is a concept work with a definite and perceivable story and development of ideas. Because of this, each song can only be fully realized within the body of the whole. Any given track, taken out of context, is incomplete.
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Eject Music
The concept album is just over an hour-long, with fourteen genre-bending tracks composed of flashes of mania, alternating whispers and screams, unusual arrangements, a seemingly endless amount of distortion, noise, sonic surprise, and extremely sinister lyrics. Reznor cites David Bowie's Low (1977) as the major influence on the sonic qualities of The Downward Spiral. He also regards the themes of abuse, isolation, and madness in Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) as a major conceptual influence.
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Plugged In
The Downward Spiral actually could be harmful, through implying and subliminally suggesting things.
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Apple Music
f the album has an essentializing moment, it’s the climax of “Closer”: mechanistic synth-funk that gives way to a warped, solitary piano, part music box, part trash. After Spiral, artists didn’t have to decide whether to be a rock band or an electronic producer—Reznor had bridged the two.
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Hyper Violet Designs
Nine Inch Nails’ magnum opus, The Downward spiral, is a bleak, visceral and harrowing concept album that explores some of the darkest points of human experience. Holding no punches, it is an industrial, nail-biting, jaw dropping, nut-crunching exploration into humankind’s eternal conflicts. The psychological duality of helplessness and defiance; vulnerability and bitterness; misery and rage. In all senses it is a cathartic explosion that rallies against the American mainstream, the superficiality of modern consumerism and the crippling isolation of the culturally disenfranchised.
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All Music
The Downward Spiral positioned Trent Reznor as industrial's own Phil Spector, painting detailed, layered soundscapes from a wide tonal palette. Not only did he fully integrated the crashing metal guitars of Broken, but several newfound elements -- expanded song structures, odd time signatures, shifting arrangements filled with novel sounds, tremendous textural variety -- can be traced to the influence of progressive rock.
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Cleveland
The Downward Spiral’ seeks no such connection, delving instead into a nightmare world of insanity, violence and the occult. If it speaks to anyone, it is to those tortured souls whose alienation manifests itself in a macabre fascination with pain, disease and death.
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Last Fm
The Downward Spiral (also known as Halo 8) is the third major release by American Industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released in 1994 on Reznor's own Nothing Records (a vanity label of Interscope Records). "Halo 8" of the official Nine Inch Nails halo releases, it is a concept album detailing the destruction of an undisclosed man; from the beginning to his climatic suicide.
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Post Punk
Although considered to be one of the greatest “industrial rock” albums of all time, the record defies genres, yet definitely showcases some post-punk and true industrial roots in its creation, evident with such as remix and video collaborations with Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and an actual cover of Joy Division recorded around the same time.
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Song Facts
The Downward Spiral album, which featured two of Reznor's best known songs "Closer" and "Hurt" was an enormous success. It sold quadruple platinum and made Reznor an uneasy megastar, but plunged him into years of self-loathing and self-destruction. He told Maximum Ink magazine: "I can look back from The Downward Spiral on and it was during that tour 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."
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Trebel
The Downward Spiral isn’t uniformly intense or confrontational. Nor is all of it even arguably pop music. Toward the back half of the album it begins to take on more of an avant garde tone, particularly in the instrumental “A Warm Place.” It’s a brief break from the chaos, sadomasochism and loathing. It’s the prettiest track of the bunch by far, if the one that takes the most listens to fully soak in, more Eno than Einsturzende Neubauten. There’s a similarly meditative sensibility to the album’s title track, which pairs a whirring drone against the coda riff of “Closer” played on acoustic guitar. There’s a brief moment of hope—just before the eruption of the muffled sounds of metal band playing in a neighboring building, beneath Reznor’s own narration of a suicide. There are noisier, harsher and more sonically violent tracks on the album, but none quite so intimately disturbing.
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Av Club
The Downward Spiral still sounds like no other record released in the ’90s: It’s dense and textured, with moments of both agonizing noise and tranquil beauty popping out of a layered, intricate mix. The album obliterated any sort of precedent for aggressive, heavy music, and created an innovative blueprint for how electronic and organic instruments could coexist. Even in an environment that was encouraging of new sounds and artists, Nine Inch Nails stood out.
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Sound Lab
While identifying the ‘best’ album from a group as prolific as Nine Inch Nails is an inherently tricky affair, where personal bias and subjectivity render it an almost impossible task; the cultural impact of The Downward Spiral can simply not be overstated. The album impressively managed to exponentially grow the band’s audience while also satisfying longtime fans.
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LA Times
Combining the seductive songwriting craft of Nirvana, the gear-grinding industrial howl of Ministry and the raw, unsettling language of William Burroughs, Reznor (who is Nine Inch Nails) leads us on a nightmarish journey to explore what he sees as an emptiness of the modern spirit.
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Hally Mustang
This album is abrasive. The parts that aren’t are just beautiful teasers fending off the next head caving distorted guitar or drumbeat.
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Sputnik
Although The Downward Spiral is splenetic and furious, everyone can identify with it on some level. We may not like to admit it, but the way in which we propelled this album into the upper echelons of popular culture speaks louder than our words.
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Louder Than War
The way the album was painstakingly conceived and impeccably assembled/constructed for a start – rich in every detail: a consciously-designed ‘song cycle’ with all manner of inventive sonic textures. Alternating melody and space with suffocating violence, claustrophobia and discordant shrapnel – was a conceit harking back to the great prog rock/concept albums of yore. Reznor openly cites Pink Floyd’s The Wall as a huge influence on this work, and it is not difficult to see some parallels with that opus. It’s fair to say that The Downward Spiral as a piece of work completely reconfigured the parameters for what a modern rock record sounded like.
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Roughtrade
The Downward Spiral is a visceral, haunting concept album, telling the story of a mans descent into despair and depravity, modeled on Trent Reznor, the sole member of Nine Inch Nails.
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Medium
It’s a timeless, brutal, elegant, introspective, visceral and cerebral masterpiece of self-hatred, isolation and suffering.
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Unsung
Reznor is now of the most powerful men in music, which is remarkable given his the way his relationship with record labels and music distribution has been delivered over the years. The lore around his second album is dense, as dense as the sounds found on the album itself.
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Louder Sound
Powered by creative freedom and recorded at the Tate house where the Manson murders took place, unsettling second album The Downward Spiral sealed Nine Inch Nails’ reputation as industrial legends.
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Britannica
Reznor’s second full-length release, The Downward Spiral (1994), bowed at number two on the Billboard album chart. On the strength of such singles as “Closer” and “Hurt,” the album soon surpassed the band’s debut in sales.
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Rowman
shering in a new era of confessional music that spoke openly about experiences of trauma, depression, and self-loathing, Nine Inch Nails' seminal album, The Downward Spiral, changed popular music forever—bringing transgressive themes of heresy, S&M, and body horror to the masses and taking music technology to its limits.
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Eric Mack Attacks
The Downward Spiral is unhealthy in large doses, as it uncomfortably probes the dark reaches of death and misery with numbing nihilism. It’s an album of awesome power; somehow Reznor has the ability to make your blood race, tricking it into thinking if it travels fast enough it will escape your veins. It’s nuts what this album does to you while you listen to it. It just takes control and doesn’t let go, pummeling your psyche until it ruptures and mining your subconscious while you’re powerless to stop it.
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Fuse
Trent Reznor raved about David Bowie's experimental 1977 release, saying it “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.”
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Pop Music
The music and message might be disillusioned, disturbed, pained, and aggressive, but The Downward Spiral remains one of the premiere albums of the past decade.
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Get Song Bpm
This album has an average beat per minute of 128 BPM (slowest/fastest tempos: 79/199 BPM).
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Music Observer
The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.
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Spin
Then there was 1994’s The Downward Spiral, NIN’s biggest release yet, which put the band on the map for an even wider base of listeners. A concept album which follows the protagonist’s descent into self-destruction, it was an instant hit, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The Downward Spiral went on to sell nearly 4 million copies, spawned various copycat bands, and even inspired Johnny Cash to cover the gut-wrenching album closer, “Hurt.”
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Sound Cloud
The Downward Spiral Instrumental Demos in one track with some additional mastering. Ruiner and Big Man with a Gun are missing with a Demo for Dead Souls in place of Ruiner. For educational purposes in sound design insight into one of the most sonically appealing albums of all time.
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Quora
The album describes an attempt to take absolute control and absolute power, its inevitable failure, and its consequences.
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Rock and Roll Globe
The Downward Spiral isn’t about the Manson murders, anyway. Released in March 1994 on Nothing Records and Interscope Records, the second studio album by Nine Inch Nails was unsettling enough without factoring in the gruesome history of its recording location—and despite later accusations that some of The Downward Spiral’s lyrics influenced one of the Columbine shooters and criticism of the lyrical violence in the single “Closer,” the album was a quick critical and commercial success.
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Independent
The unfortunate postscript to Pretty Hate Machine arrived in two distinct chapters. The first was in 1993 as Reznor started on Nine Inch Nail’s second album, The Downward Spiral (recorded after he had extracted himself from his toxic relationship with TVT). Fame had become a hooting primate on Reznor’s back. He was a natural rock star. Nonetheless, celebrity was an anathema to him.
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Feel Numb
The Downward Spiral, Broken EP as well as Marilyn Manson’s debut album Portrait of an American Family.
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Music Omh
The Downward Spiral, an industrial rock centred concept album about the destruction of man, is an hour-long descent into total madness that went beyond rage and anger. Few rock records of the last couple of decades have been this claustrophobic and bleak but Reznor not only managed to crack it, he crafted one of the most cohesive, varied and heavy-hitting rock albums of the ’90s, and it still sounds fresh and exhilirating. That’s some going considering it’s nearly 20 years old.
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MTV
Reznor and his able band plowed through the 14 tracks that make up The Downward Spiral with savagery and grace.
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Huffing Post
NIN's album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and went on to be certified quadruple-platinum. "The Downward Spiral" established Nine Inch Nails as a force within the 90's alt-rock scene and beyond, and remains widely regarded as the band's best work.
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Best Ever Album
The Downward Spiral is ranked as the best album by Nine Inch Nails.
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Waaf
Reznor says that the concept behind The Downward Spiral was to make it a fast, angry, hard-hitting record that takes off in multiple directors while still sounding like all of the songs are connected. Reznor added that the record's main theme was centered around how vices like drugs and alcohol are used to mask the pain that is kept buried inside.
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Sound on Sound
Released on 8th March 1994, the highly acclaimed Nine Inch Nails album was most successful in the US, peaking at number two on the Billboard 200, en route to amassing more than four million sales there. It also reached number nine in the UK, establishing NIN as a significant force on the Transatlantic '90s music scene.
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Birth Movies Death
It's one of the angriest, darkest albums of all time. And it's a masterpiece.
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Sargent House
When Nine Inch Nails released their second full-length album, The Downward Spiral, on March 8th, 1994, it immediately sent shock waves through the alternative music scene with its bold concept (Trent Reznor's dark examination of obsession, suffering and self-destruction) and even bolder industrial-rock sound and expert songcraft. Not long after, thanks to inimitable singles like "Closer," the album became a surprise mainstream hit and against all odds now ranks as one of the decade's most commercially successful albums, as well as one of its most artistically enduring. On the eve of The Downward Spiral's 25th birthday, we asked some of our favorite contemporary musicians to talk about their experiences with this pivotal record.
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Encyclotronic
The Downward Spiral (also known as Halo 8) is Nine Inch Nails' second studio album, though it is largely considered the third major release after the Broken EP, which consisted of entirely new material. It was released on March 8, 1994. It is likely the most acclaimed and well-known of the band's discography, and is said to have brought "industrial" music to the mainstream.
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Ranker
There are plenty of contenders for the best albums of the '90s, but The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails is an LP that’s more than a look inside 1994. The album is a genuine masterpiece written and recorded by Trent Reznor during the beginning of his descent into drug-fueled madness. Through the record, Reznor was able to channel the depression and mania that were piling on his personal and professional lives into a dense concept album that captured the feeling of falling apart.
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Stereogum
Reznor sounded ravaged and disbelieving, while Cash seemed to be accepting his fate in real time. And in Reznor’s version, there was the persistent threat that some horrible noise could burst into the song at any moment, like the Kool-Aid Man. That’s how Reznor kept the tension in his music; in the prettiest moments, ugliness was always right around the corner, and vice versa.
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Tv Tropes
The Downward Spiral, released in 1994, is the second album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, and the band's first full work following their shift from a dark, Synth-Pop-influenced sound (Pretty Hate Machine) to harsher sounds of industrial rock (Broken EP).
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KSU Lifestyle
The Downward Spiral is the second full-length record by industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails. It was released, after multiple delays, to rave reviews on March 8, 1994. Trent Reznor, the founder and frontman of the group, recorded the bulk of the album in the infamous Tate House (a decision he later regretted) while dealing with depression and drug addiction. Miraculously, the (chosen and circumstantial) darkness of this period of Reznor’s life yielded a masterpiece.
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Urban Dictionary
A conceptual album and the second studio album released by Nine Inch Nails in May of 1994. It revolves around an unidentified man who basically goes on a "downward spiral" essentially, or path to eventual and imminent self-destruction. It went quadruple platinum, and was deemed "The bleakest platinum album probably ever released."
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Music Tech
A grim genesis resulted in one of the most acclaimed albums of the 90s. Over 20 years since its release Trent Reznor’s harrowing opus The Downward Spiral continues to sonically enthral.
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Blabbermouth
"The Downward Spiral" was the highly ambitious concept album that propelled singer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Reznor to star status and brought industrial music to mainstream audiences.
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Cover Me Songs
There may not be an mainstream artist out there as difficult to cover as Nine Inch Nails. By its very nature, Trent Reznor’s music doesn’t offer an easy way in. Johnny Cash did it beautifully of course, but let’s be honest, “Hurt” wasn’t exactly the most abrasive song in the band’s catalog to begin with. In keeping with the Nine Inch Nails spirit, then, many (though certainly not all) of the covers below show at least some industrial influence. It’s noisy, it’s loud, and it’s strangely cathartic. Just like the original.
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EW
Reznor describes Spiral as ”more emotionally wrought and sonically sadistic” than Nine Inch Nails’ gold debut, Pretty Hate Machine, but says his surroundings had nothing to with the altered sound. ”The difference between albums has to do with every aspect of my life changing, from living in the ghetto in Cleveland to having some amount of recognition,” says Reznor. ”My new album may be less obviously listener-friendly than Hate Machine, but I think it signifies growth.”
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The Verge
The Downward Spiral — or "Halo 8," as it’s known to NIN serialogists — is an unapologetically conceptual album. Listening to it from beginning to end squeezed my hormonal brain right through the spiral, which was presumably a projection of Reznor’s vice-ridden lifestyle, distilled and packaged for general consumption under bleak abstractions by the artist Russell Mills. It alluded to an uncomfortable world none of my friends or family understood. Tracks unfold into a cinematic tour of that rusted-out landscape with a brilliantly psychopathic narrator who’s constantly at war with the forces inside his soul.
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The Know
“The Downward Spiral” is a concept album that follows a man as he descends into nihilism, masochism, fascism and insanity. It also touches on themes of imperialism, authority and self-destruction. It set off a long and ravaging chemical abuse problem for Trent Reznor — one that could have easily ended his life at the time.
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Genre Is Dead
When Nine Inch Nails released The Downward Spiral in 1994, it was an assault on music no one saw coming. Its genre-blending sound, bleak themes, and no-holds-barred attitude helped launched Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails into the mainstream.
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Smells Like Infinite Sadness
The tortured vibe of the album was also influenced by where it was recorded; the home where Sharon Tate was murdered by Charles Manson. It was a flippant choice of studio (and abode, Reznor lived in it at the time), and this would come to haunt him.
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Violent Ashes
The sound of the Downward Spiral continues the heavy chaotic distortion of Broken but with emphasis on mood and texture bringing synthesizers back in the mix as well extensive use of textured noise. The Rhythms are a mix of typical hard rigid programmed Industrial style drums (hard deep kicks, smashing snares and electronic hi hats) there is also use of unprocessed and processed drums and loops. The unprocessed drums give the album a more conventional rock feel but implemented in a unconventional way. Basslines are largely analogue synth sequences but their is bass guitar on a few tracks.
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The Quietus
The Downward Spiral remains a dynamic and layered work that offers more at every listen. Though it takes time for some to fully appreciate it, its varied textures and moods make it both a staple and subverter of industrial music. The melodies are actually very accessible, once accessed; you just have to wade through and learn to appreciate the noise, distractions and overall dirt around them.
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