NINE INCH NAILS AT 30: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL BY ALEX DAVIS

I've had a few false starts at writing this particular review – partly because so much has already been said about this album, and equally because it's somewhat hard for me to pin down exactly how important this particular album means to me. When I reel off my favourite five albums ever, the top two tends to fluctuate between this and NIN's next full album, The Fragile. In a way that and The Downward Spiral make for fascinating bedfellows – today's offering has a dark and nihilistic tone, but softens the harsh edges of the Broken EP that proceeded it with softer and more melodic tracks such as Piggy, A Warm Place and of course Hurt. The Fragile covers a wider range in terms of mood and styles, and which one of these two albums is my favourite probably depends on my mindset on any given day.

So if you wanted to read about the amazing platinum-selling success of this album, the difficult recording, the controversies upon release and the rest about this iconic album, that's all out there for you, but for today I just want to focus on my own emotional connection with this one.

The Downward Spiral launches with the opening salvo of Mr Self Destruct, a track with a brutal rhythm that seems to lay down something of a manifesto for this whole album. The Downward Spiral has been interpreted as telling the story of an individual on their way to suicide, and it's not hard to weave that thread as you listen through this album if you wish to. Piggy is a fascinating follow-up track, being much gentler and less discordant, but it only proves a brief respite before the aggression contained within both Heresy and notably March of the Pigs. March is renowned for its extremely unusual musical pattern, as well as one of my favourite video recordings where Trent Reznor absolutely wrecks about two or three mic stands in the space of about four minutes.
 
Two of Nine Inch Nails' best known songs reside on this album, the first coming in the form of Closer, which was a regular floor-filler at alternative clubs all through my college and University days. It still holds up at a less rock-oriented number with a sexual edge, especially when you don't hear it every week on rotation from an alternative night DJ. As a side note, I've always loved the 'Precursor' version of this track, almost as much as the original.

The thing that is incredible about The Downward Spiral is that no matter how well it begins, it just doesn't let anything slide in terms of quality as you work through. Ruiner and Eraser make for a great double-header, and I can't emphasise how much I just love The Becoming. It's a song I'll often come to when I'm at my lowest, because it feels like one of those tracks that simply nails the feeling of depression, with the anguished cries towards the end of the song from Reznor simply exacerbating this feel. I wouldn't exactly call it a pick-me-up, but often there's as much value in knowing that somebody else has felt the same sort of thing. Reptile is another staggering track, bringing in more industrial effects and strange, otherworldly lyrics in a track that I often find myself trying to unpack but never really feeling as though I have satisfyingly gotten to the bottom of.

And then, we close with Hurt. Hurt. I feel like I have no other words – it's a song that's incredibly simple and beautiful and heartbreaking, and the perfect closing note for this – or any – album. The fact that a musical great like Johnny Cash would want to cover it tells its own story of the emotional impact this song has. When I saw the band live last year, and the whole room sang along every word, I don't mind admitting I shed a tear – more than one, in fact. It was a properly unforgettable moment. I'd hope that whatever legacy NIN leave behind them, people looking in from all strands of music will be able to see Hurt for one of the greatest songs ever written, period.

The Downward Spiral felt like a band and a performer coming of age, casting off the heavy influence that had come before and forging ahead to produce something unique. It outstrips any of the band's previous output in terms of ambition, scope and – dare I say – achievement, and launched a whole new era where the band would be one of the biggest in the world for a long time. It's an album I invariably listen to all the way through – something I can rarely say for much else in my collection – because I feel as though you lose something in taking out any individual track, even the ones I would say stood out the least. The Downward Spiral is often considered the band's best work, and with very good reason – although, as I mentioned, The Fragile is certainly not a record to be underestimated...