Nearly exactly 18 years ago, I came home from a record shopping trip to Bournemouth with a second-hand copy of The Downward Spiral on cd, which I was very pleased to have bought for £6. I'd not heard any Nine Inch Nails at this point, but knew I wanted to get into them - everything I'd read in Kerrang! and heard about them made me think they were a band I wanted to be a fan of. On listening to it, I remember thinking at the time that I was glad I hadn't got into them sooner, when I was younger and wouldn't have got it; a very precocious thought for a 16-year-old to have, but not an entirely surprising one, all considering.
My thinking was that the younger-me would have been put off by the instruments that weren't guitars and drums, and would have considered it too far from rock music, the very broad genre I had decided was for me; there are records in my collection today that 14- and 15-year-old-me would be very shocked to see indeed.
As it was, I decided I was "old enough" to appreciate the things Trent Reznor was doing musically and decided it was fine to branch out from traditional instruments to the industrial noise this album contained. In hindsight, I suspect part of it was that I'd spent money on it - had I been leant a copy there's a very good chance I'd have dismissed it as "not rock" and spent years ignoring the band, a mistake I'm glad I didn't make. I think part of me really wanted to like it despite everything else because everything I'd heard about the band had made me really want to be a fan. Whatever it was, I got into it and it became a huge album for me. 18 years later, I still think it's a landmark album and enjoy that it's been part of my life for more than half of it.
I can still remember the feeling of pressing play that first time, not really knowing what to expect and hearing that solitary strike at the start of Mr Self Destruct. Then hearing it again and again increasingly quickly before the song properly starts - what a way to start an album - so sparse and bold. There are a lot of albums that start off strong, but none in such a unique way. The song is brilliantly abrasive and it was around that point that I decided I was going to be a fan and that I was glad I'd not dismissed them at an earlier age. I also remember loving the way the drums in Piggy drift away from the song such that they're almost playing independently from the other instruments, only to have the keys float in creating a calm over the maniacal drumming. Throughout the album the drumming is huge and forms a large part of the sound - for a long time, that drum sound was what I associated with industrial music, and the bands I liked the most were the ones that made the most of drums.
Of course, being a self-obsessed teen, I read far too much into the lyrics, despite really not understanding the intended concept very well at all. I'd like to pretend that I didn't try to read so much into them, but if I said I didn't that would be a lie; a teenager with a lyric booklet is a very dangerous thing indeed. This vinyl reissue comes with a 12" booklet giving details about the recording and production process, which was a fascinating read and an unexpected highlight of buying the record. It talks about what Trent considered the theme to be, which I got bits of but hadn't tied together quite so nicely in my mind.
The Downward Spiral was the 16th album I'd bought and furthered the idea in my mind that an album should be more than just a collection of songs, but a work intended to be heard as a whole with a beginning, a middle and an end. Of course there are albums I love that don't adhere to that, but I've certainly got a soft-spot for those that do. And what an end this album has - after 13 songs of difficult and abrasive industrial music (albeit played with Trent's astute understanding of pop, and how to apply it to the most unlikely music), the album closes with Hurt. Can you imagine what it was like for a 16-year-old to hear that, not knowing that he had such song-writing in him, let alone that finishing an album like this in that way was even allowed? Needless to say, it quickly became a favourite and one that I knew all the lyrics to by heart. In hindsight, it's laughable that I thought that I was in anyway unique in doing that - the album had sold countless copies for years and 16-year-olds everywhere around the world were doing the exact same thing. Again, the drums are brilliant.
Despite all my embarrassing associations with this album, I still fucking love it. It hits hard and hasn't aged (as far as I'm concerned), which isn't something I can say of a lot of the other music I was listening to back then. Sometimes I go years without playing it, other times I listen to it often. I look forward to enjoying it for many years to come.
Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, 12" booklet
Tracks: 14
Cost: £23 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 16/07/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
