Closer Precursor. A Violet Fluid. Hurt Quiet. Closer To God. All the Pigs, All Lined Up. The Downward Spiral The Bottom. Ruiner Demo. Liar Reptile Demo. Heresy Demo. March 8, 27 Songs, 2 Hours, 15 Minutes. Other Versions. The Downward Spiral 14 Songs. Music Videos. More by Nine Inch Nails. With Teeth The Downward Spiral Add Violence Pretty Hate Machine Remastered The Fragile Not The Actual Events My best guess is that Nine Inch Nails hit upon just the right amount of dance music content to gloss up his dire tunes without scaring off the homophobes.
Reznor's dance leanings are constantly bubbling just under the surface of The Downward Spiral , and it nearly goes without saying that the breakout hit, "Closer", leaned a bit more obviously in that direction than most of the rest of the album. Easily the record's sexiest song and slinkiest beat, its disco thump still sounds markedly current. Meanwhile, "Heresy", for all its Nietzsche-inspired deicide, is a couple clicks of the distortion dial away from being a Depeche Mode song.
And don't forget, "March of the Pigs" beat "Firestarter" to the digital hardcore punch by three years. The B-side-filled second disc of this reissue assists this hindsight. Reznor was always fond of emphasizing clubby rhythms rather than tortured screams on his many, many self-remixes. The remix replaced the original's jazzy sparseness with a graveyard of broken breakbeats.
And for fuck's sake, there's even a cover of Soft Cell's "Memorabilia" to balance out the much-too-easy goth karaoke of "Dead Souls", the set's other homage. Reznor might've gone off the art-rock deep end with The Fragile , an album I have absolutely no recollection of whatsoever, but The Downward Spiral still holds together, aided by a few musical reprises and its monochromatic lyrical content.
Reznor had his album dynamics down pat at the time, chasing the brutal Gaspar Noe rape of "Big Man with a Gun" with "A Warm Place", the closest thing a teenager got to Eno in that era. Even the much-overrated "Hurt", which I didn't even like in the hands of a dying country singer, is a suitable post-storm calm. That Reznor's chainsaw guitars haven't dulled after a decade of Stabbing Filter Manson knockoffs is gratifying, and that they still cut glass-- remastering or no-- is a credit to his production skills.
With the benefit of Dolby 5. But even in obsolete stereophonic, the peekaboo drums of "Piggy" and the oscillating broken piano of "Closer" still impress. Which is why it's a shame Reznor has largely been in seclusion since The Fragile shattered on impact.
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