The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released on March 8, 1994, by Nothing Records in the United States and Island Records in Europe. It is a concept album detailing the self-destruction of a man from the beginning of his misanthropic "downward spiral" to his suicidal breaking point. The album was a commercial success and established Nine Inch Nails as a reputable force in the 1990s music scene, with its sound being widely imitated, and the band receiving media attention and multiple honors.
Trent Reznor, the band's sole official member at the time, had moved to 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, the site of the murder of actress Sharon Tate by members of the Manson Family in 1969; it was transformed into a studio for recording the Broken EP and subsequently The Downward Spiral. The album features elements of industrial rock, techno, metal and ambient soundscapes, in contrast to the band's synth-pop-influenced debut album Pretty Hate Machine. Reznor was strongly influenced by David Bowie's Low and Pink Floyd's The Wall for their themes of introspection and dissociation, and their focus on texture and space.
The Downward Spiral was praised for its abrasive, eclectic nature and dark themes, and it has since been regarded by music critics and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential albums of the 1990s and of all time, although it was sensationalized by social conservatives for some of its lyrics. The album spawned two lead singles, "March of the Pigs" and "Closer", in addition to the promotional singles "Piggy" and "Hurt". The lead singles were accompanied by music videos, with the former shot twice and the latter being heavily censored. A remix album titled Further Down the Spiral was released in 1995.
Writing and recording
Reznor conceived of The Downward Spiral after Nine Inch Nails' run in the lineup of the Lollapalooza festival tour, feeling increasingly alienated and disinterested. The band's concerts were known for their radical onstage dynamic in which members acted aggressively, injured themselves, destroyed instruments, and polluted stages. Reznor had begun to feud with TVT Records, resulting in him co-founding Nothing Records with his then-manager John Malm Jr. as a subsidiary of Interscope. Simultaneously, he began fleshing out the concept for The Downward Spiral, focusing on the life and death of a misanthropic man who rebels against humanity, and kills God before attempting suicide. Reznor frequently struggled with drug addiction and depression, and the themes of the album gradually allegorized his living situation. His peers at some point recommended him the antidepressant Prozac, but he declined to be medicated.Reznor wanted the album's sound to diverge from the abrasion of Broken, emphasizing mood, texture, restraint and subtlety, although he was unsure about its musical direction. He decided to utilize "full range" sound, focusing on texture and space, and avoiding conventional usage of guitars or synthesizers with a recognizable sound palette. Subsequently, he mainly worked with a Macintosh computer, using music editor programs on the computer to distort frequencies in guitar and bass parts as a form of sound design, and creating collages of sounds with Pro Tools.
File:Sharon Tate Valley of the Dolls 1967 - Restoration.jpg|thumb|upright|Reznor rented the house where actress Sharon Tate was murdered, and set up a recording studio that he named Le Pig, where The Downward Spiral was recorded. The site was demolished shortly after the recording of the album.
Reznor searched for a location for a studio in Los Angeles and moved to 10050 Cielo Drive in 1992 for recording Broken and The Downward Spiral, a decision made against his initial choice to record the album in New Orleans. 10050 Cielo Drive is referred to as the "Tate House" since Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969; Reznor named the studio "Le Pig" after the message that was scrawled on the front door with Tate's blood by her murderers, and stayed there with Malm for 18 months. He called his first night in 10050 Cielo Drive "terrifying" because he already knew it and read books related to the incident. Reznor chose the Tate house to calibrate his engineering skills and the band bought a large mixing console and two Studer multitrack tape machines as resources, a move that he believed was cheaper than renting a recording studio.
Reznor collaborated with the Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins, the progressive rock guitarist Adrian Belew, and the Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna. Belew's first visit to the studio involved playing the guitar parts in "Mr. Self Destruct", and he was told to play freely, think on reacting to melodies, concentrate on rhythm, and use noise. This approach improved Reznor's confidence in the instrument: he found it to be more expressive than the keyboard due to the interface. Belew praised Reznor for his "command of technology," and commented that the music of Nine Inch Nails made innovations "that are in realm." Vrenna and Perkins played drum parts recorded live in the studio; the tracks were rendered into looped samples. Reznor took a similar approach to recording guitar parts: he would tape 20- to 25-minute-long sessions of himself playing guitars on a hard disc recorder with the Studio Vision sequencer.
Reznor frequently sampled excerpts from his guitar session tracks and processed them to sporadic and expressive points to convey the album's themes, also doing the same with drum parts. Digidesign's TurboSynth and Zoom 9030 effects unit were used extensively to process guitar tracks, often in conjunction with a Marshall JMP-1 preamp; Zoom 9030 was also used to distort vocals. Acoustic drums in various settings, as well as Roland's TR-808 and R-70 drum machines, which were sampled through multiple Akai S1000s and a Kurzweil K2000. Additionally, Vrenna had compiled various movie samples on Digital Audio Tapes for Reznor to sample, which were gradually identified by fans in the decades following the album's release. Other equipment and software Reznor used for recording the album included the Oberheim OB-Mx, Moog Minimoog, Sequential Circuits Prophet VS keyboard, Eventide H3000 Harmonizer, Pro Tools and various Jackson and Gibson guitars.
In December 1993, Reznor was confronted by Patti Tate, Sharon Tate's youngest sister, who asked if he was exploiting her sister's death in the house. Reznor responded that he was interested in the house as her death happened there. He later made a statement about this encounter during a 1997 interview with Rolling Stone:
The British producer and engineer Flood, who previously engineered and co-produced Nine Inch Nails' debut album Pretty Hate Machine and Broken, was brought back to co-produce The Downward Spiral; although it would be his last collaboration with Nine Inch Nails due to creative differences. For instance, a "very dangerously self-destructive" yet humorous short song written for the album, "Just Do It", was not included in the final version, criticized by Flood who said that Reznor had "gone too far." After the album's recording, Reznor moved out and the house was demolished shortly thereafter. "Hurt" was the last song written for the album, with both "Hurt" and "Big Man With A Gun" recorded as "an afterthought" at A&M Studios. The Downward Spiral entered its mixing and mastering processes, done at the Record Plant and A&M Studios with Alan Moulder, who subsequently took on more extensive production duties for future album releases.
Music and lyrics
Numerous layers of metaphors are present throughout The Downward Spiral, leaving it open to wide interpretation. The album relays nihilism and is defined by a prominent theme of self-abuse and self-control. It is a semi-autobiographical concept album, in which the overarching plot follows the protagonist's descent into madness in his own inner solipsistic world through a metaphorical "downward spiral", dealing with religion, dehumanization, violence, disease, society, drugs, sex, and finally, suicide. Reznor described the concept as consisting of "someone who sheds everything around them to a potential nothingness, but through career, religion, relationship, belief and so on." Media journalists like The New York Times writer Jon Pareles noted the album's theme of angst had already been used by grunge bands like Nirvana, and that Nine Inch Nails' depiction was more generalized.
Using elements of genres such as techno, dance, electronic, heavy metal, and hard rock, The Downward Spiral is considered an industrial rock, alternative rock, industrial metal, industrial, and art rock album. Reznor regularly uses noise and distortion in his song arrangements that do not follow verse–chorus form, and incorporates dissonance with chromatic melody or harmony. The treatment of metal guitars in Broken is carried over to The Downward Spiral, which includes innovative techniques such as expanded song structures and unconventional time signatures. The album features a wide range of textures and moods to illustrate the mental progress of the central protagonist. Reznor's singing follows a similar pattern from beginning to end, frequently moving from whispers to screams. These techniques are all used in the song "Hurt", which features a highly dissonant tritone played on guitar during the verses, a B5#11, emphasized when Reznor sings the eleventh note on the word "I" every time the B/E# dyad is played.
"Mr. Self Destruct", a song about a powerful person, follows a build-up sampled from the 1971 film THX 1138 with an "industrial roar" and is accompanied by an audio loop of a pinion rotating. "The Becoming" expresses the state of being dead and the protagonist's transformation into a non-human organism. "Closer" concludes with a chromatic piano motif: The melody is introduced during the second verse of "Piggy" on organ, then reappears in power chords at drop D tuning throughout the chorus of "Heresy", and recurs for the final time on "The Downward Spiral".