NINE INCH NAILS
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Reznor first appeared in 1989 with his debut LP Pretty Hate Machine. Working with such accomplished producers as Flood (U2, Depeche Mode), John Fryer (Erasure), and Adrian Sherwood (Tackhead), the rural Pennsylvania wunderkind polished and refined his home tapes–created with a Macintosh and an Emax keyboard–and produced one of the more impressive first splashes of the decade. Pretty Hate Machine tugged on a relatively small number of thematic strings–hate, sex, and sexual hate, with a dollop of spiritual rot for good measure–but it tugged with an able melodic sense, yielding two bona fide hits in “Down in It” and “Head Like a Hole” while gesturing toward a wider range with sophisticated (even subtle) Sturm und Drang workouts like “Sin” and “The Only Time.” Showered with critical acclaim, Reznor rustled up a band for the first edition of Lollapalooza, and to his studio-whiz identity added a rep as a live threat who put his songs across with scorched-earth intensity. But Reznor failed to capitalize on his debut. Though there was talk of a follow-up album as early as summer 1990–Flood would produce, and the sound would be harder than hard, adamantine–Nine Inch Nails generated nothing new in 1990 or 1991. Just when the constant stream of remixes started to lose its appeal, Reznor resurfaced with an uneven EP, Broken, late in 1992. He’s finally reappeared in full force with a second album, The Downward Spiral.
Both an expansion and a consolidation of the promise of his debut, The Downward Spiral, largely coproduced with Flood, hammers home Nine Inch Nails’ trademark themes with a growing musical confidence. “Mr. Self Destruct” kicks off the effort, its menacing verses modulating into a fiery chorus; its fury, however, is a bit perfunctory. After that though, the album flows confidently, from the twisted lounge crooning of “Piggy” to the calculator funk of “Closer,” from the punky bounce of “Big Man With a Gun” to the ambient harmonics of “A Warm Place.” Voluptuous and layered, The Downward Spiral rewards careful listening. Often Reznor deploys multiple approaches in a single song; the lyrics of “March of the Pigs”–which seem mannered or worse on the printed page (“Stains like the blood on your teeth / Bite chew suck away the tender parts / I want to break it up I want to smash it up I want to fuck it up”)–are put across with the song’s breakneck pace and a quiet, sardonic piano diminuendo (“Now doesn’t that make you feel better?”).
