There's little in all of human creative endeavour more viscerally emotive than music. It has been variously described in psychological and mythological terms as the highest form of art (so because, unlike almost every other form of creative expression, it does not require context or wider interpretation in order to evoke emotion or spark reaction), as the secret language of creation itself (various traditional and fantasy mythologies describe creation itself being sung into being, the secret rhythms of reality taking the form of a music beyond human comprehension, that our own pluckings and warblings are but pale echoes of).
 
The very best examples tap into that factor, acknowledge and reflect it, providing an experience that is ineffable and emotive, that evokes wider context without imposing or enshrining it.
 
Nine Inch Nails, with their grimy, industrial, suburban ethos, the impressions their music evokes of skittering on the edge of fractured and bleeding reality, are a prime example: their work generally schizophrenic and discordant, the sounds of breaking down machinery and shattering windows, the screams of damned human beings being mercilessly fed into ancient, metaphysical engines, their very, very finest work not only reflects certain cultural phenomena (they are very much of the school that taps into lost and disenfranchised youth, the celebration of apocalypse and the tearing down of established orders, systems and institutions) but also serves as a means of inspiring worlds:
 
Closing one's eyes and listening to, for example, the likes of The Fragile can be an experience as transcendental and hallucinatory as flying on certain narcotics (another factor that NIN's music deliberately taps into). They are, unlike most of the popular and mainstream music they clearly despise, not a communal experience; their work intended for the lost and isoalted, to be listened to in darkened bedrooms and basements, away from light, away from the eyes of every day humanity. It is a celebration of the monstrous, the outside, the outre. In that, it conjures nightmares and hellscapes: vast, industrial ruins and science fiction plains of alien, living flesh married to H.R. Giger bio-mechanisms, dystopias in which humanity is married to its engines in a manner that dissolves any definition between the two, and leaves all of creation little more than a seeping, grinding, impossibly elaborate mechanism, a grim, impotent god-machine that can never be free of itself or know its original intention.
 
Their work evokes story and mythology and particular states of lucid psychology that allows the listener to delve deep down, to pare away the septums that separate us from our sublimated layers of consciousness and dream whilst partially awake.
 
In that, the year 2000 remix album, Things Falling Apart, becomes almost ironic by nature of its very existence:
 
Originally released to critical desolation, the album boasts little in the way of new work, but takes existing tracks and subjects them to a Frankensteinian process of tearing apart and restructuring: some are hardly changed at all from their original incarnations, merely flourished with an extra layer of bass or back-beat, their tempo increased or slowed to a graveyard crawl, whereas others are  shredded to tatters before being pieced back together in forms that are barely recognisable.
 
Given the counter-culture, anti-establishment roots of the band itself, one might argue that the very existence of a “remix album” is a cynical example of hypocrisy, an entirely commercialised endeavour that was likely decided more by boardroom than by band meeting.
 
And that isn't entirely unfair when one sits down to listen to the album, but nor is it the entire story:
 
If one is unfamiliar with NIN and the particular musical sub-cultures in which they operate, then one might be forgiven for being captivated by the grinding, industrial nihilism of tracks like The Wretched, bleakly entranced by the child-like isolation and loneliness of Where is Everybody? Given that the album largely consists of tracks that are already familiar, that already have their places and contexts within the band's back-catalogue, it's hardly surprising that they remain as evocative and visceral as they ever were (even in their altered forms).
 
I can still listen to the likes of The Great Collapse and envision great, polluted waves rising over grimy, industrial towers and murky suburbs, chemical seas sweeping in to wash away the filth of humanity for new and awful forms of life to arise. I can still hear the engines that churn behind waking reality, that give rise to both genesis and apocalypse, that have been breaking down for aeons, whose entropy NIN's work reflects. I can hear the Lovercraftian horrors whispering and singing through the veil of reality worn hideously thin, pouring their mad dreams, their lunatic visions, into the minds of humanity.
 
I can listen to The Frail and feel a mind breaking down, a once brilliant genius dissolving into a mire of dementia and confusion. I can see the old man in his chair, perhaps twitching as malfunctioning augmetics and engines attempt to keep him alive while the world outside rots and grows ever more infested. I can see the wheels turning, the half-flesh, half-machine contraptions turning, swelling, billowing, the old man begging, begging to be put out of his misery, allowed to die with what little dignity, what little humanity, he has left.
 
I can listen to the Charlie Clouser remix of Starfuckers and feel the cold expanse of oblivion stretching endlessly all around, the light of dead stars on my naked body as something swirls in the dark, something vaster than stars or worlds or nebulae hurtling towards me, growing more maddening and elaborate with every beat of its multiple wings.
 
By contrast, the Dave Ogilvie remix of the same track is the screaming, discordant hymn of a prisoner, a sentience stripped of its original form and identity, sealed within a great engine that it is forced to feed and direct in its functions, a human brain surgically plucked from its skull and wired into an immense computer system as little more than a redundant processing unit, barely able to hold onto its sense of self amidst the millions of others it has become one with.
 
Adrian Sherwood's adaptation is more operatic: a space-opera apocalypse in which an industrialised Earth blooms and billows, great vessels and munitions rising from its surface to fill the sky with fire, to turn surrounding space into a psychedelic inferno, alien ships and those of humanity clashing in lunatic nihilism, not caring if they render the planet below uninhabitable, if they turn space itself into a wasteland.
 
That is where NIN have alway been at their strongest, the manner in which I have always engaged with their music: in its potential for imagery, for evoking mythology, which this album exhibits in characteristic style.
 
However, there is also a hollowness here, a lingering, tinny note of insincerity born by the album's nature as a fairly commercial, corporate exercise. Unlike so much of NIN's work, the album doesn't exist to shudder or unsettle its audience, to approach them almost violently in how starkly different it is from proscribed markets and mainstream works.
 
As such, much of its evocative qualities are dulled, certainly in comparison with previous albums and the work they produced in the earlier years of their career. It doesn't feel as powerful or emotive or traumatic as much of what's gone before. Instead, there is a staidness to it all, a synthetic quality that is difficult to cleanse from the palate, especially given that this was released as a companion to the eminently more sincere and experimental The Fragile.
 
The tracks, whilst maintaining a certain capacity to evoke and inspire, especially in certain altered frames of mind -which the music itself largely reflects-, also have a tendency towards similarity that  reduces the experience to an aural soup or mire. There is a thematic indistinction here that is notably absent in many other NIN albums, which can have the quality of making one track bleed into another or become little more than a minor deviation from its siblings. This can make the album feel overdrawn and even slightly wearisome at times, a far cry from the heady emotion of The Fragile or the prog-rock visionary qualities of The Downward Spiral.
 
That said, there is still no denying how powerfully vivid and evocative the album is at its best, the opening track, Slipping Away, establishing a heavily mechanical, dystopian theme from the off, sounding like the interminable pounding of great engines that the later tracks mythologically elaborate upon, the following piece -Where is Everybody?- eliciting an almost cyber-punk element of existential crisis that present-day audiences might associate with the likes of The Gorillaz, most notably Demon Days, which has more than a minor NIN influence.  
 
As the backing track for imaginative or meditational exercise, as a phenomena to lose oneself in, there is little like Nine Inch Nails. Even in their less well-regarded moments, there are barbs and embers of emotion, of visceral reaction; images that coalesce unbidden in the audience's mind, leaving them to wonder what unspoken realms the music might lead them to, if they allow it; what forbidden or sacred spaces within themselves they might unlock, should they prove perverse enough.
 
In that, Things Falling Apart occupies a strange place, best experienced outside of context, as a phenomena unto itself, in the isolation of one's own thoughts, where the music can carry us to wherever and whatever states it wills. 

George Daniel Lea 

 
It’s hard to objectively review an album that, when I first heard it two decades ago, had such a mighty influence on how I came to listen to music. It gave me my first experience of feeling that I had to persevere to understand an album because, despite my frustration, I just knew that it would reward me in the end.

As with all of my Ginger Nuts of Horror pieces, this is mainly a personal account rather than a description of the album’s further-reaching impact.

The Fragile is in many ways a follow-up to The Downward Spiral, but its structure is longer and far more sprawling than the comparative meticulousness of its predecessor. Rather than telling the tale of a man who grows so self-obsessed and miserable that he eventually takes his own life as in The Downward Spiral, The Fragile deals with similar themes but never reaches a firm conclusion. It takes the listener on a long, winding journey that ends on as uncertain and uncomfortable a note as it begins.

It’s not as widely-loved as The Downward Spiral, and it’s far from flawless, but this double album with its Left Disc and Right Disc is my favourite NIN release.

Opener to Left Disc Somewhat Damaged starts with a fittingly gradual build-up, managing to create a hypnotic hook from a tune with an odd 9 beats to a bar. It swells and rises, adding more mechanical blasts of guitar and thudding percussion before halfway through slipping into a more regular 8-beat pattern. The song’s glib yet angst-ridden repeated line, “…too fucked up to care anymore” may as well be the album’s motto.

2nd track The Day the World Went Away is apparently a song about Trent Reznor’s late grandmother, but when I first listened to it, it seemed to capture so much about the agony of encroaching adulthood. Loss and regret, ennui and terror, all packaged together in a percussion-free song that pendulum-swings between near-silence and a wall-of-noise barrage. It’s on tracks like this that Trent’s attention to detail is on full show: during a quiet section of slowing guitars that seem to shrink quieter with each repetition, the final guitar stroke begins a quarter-moment before the distorted climax bears down like a life-affirming yet life-draining tidal wave. That microscopic delay means that even now, after 20 years of listening, the climax to the song hits me every time.

The Wretched is one of my favourite tracks. It’s just so scuzzy and murky, oozing self-loathing and an almost sadistic relishing of the awfulness of the world, all topped-off with a scum-soaked guitar solo played from the bottom of a swamp.

I could wax lyrical about almost every song on Left Disc – the weirdly uplifting grime of We’re In This Together Now, the tragic sorrow of the title track, the tribal drums and rising intensity of Just Like You Imagined, the Dr Dre-assisted beats of Even Deeper, the unsettling industrial churn of Pilgrimage, the apocalyptic final riffs of No, You Don’t, the tranquil melancholy of La Mer – but I’m going to move straight to the final track before turning to Right Disc.

The Great Below is one of my favourite songs of all time. Here’s a quick anecdote.

When I was 20, my friend and I ate some magic cookies. After lolling about in my room for an hour or two, admiring the swirl of each other’s faces and convincing ourselves that the music we were playing was alive somehow, I decided that the best thing we could possibly do would be to take a trip to the beach and watch the sea. As a side note, I was having a fantastic time, but my poor pal was teetering on the edge of sanity, so perhaps forcing him to depart the safety of my bedroom was a little cruel, but hey, NO RAGRETS, as the famous tattoo exclaims.

It was a glorious sunny day, and while I relished the warm kiss of the sun and a psychedelic sense of surreal bliss, my poor mate kept mumbling behind me, “If anyone looks at me I’m going to lose it…”

We reached the beach, which for some reason was empty. The sea was liquid gold as I put my headphones in and started The Great Below. Now, for me, it is a perfect piece of music. Drenched in sorrow yet peppered with tragic granules of hope, it’s an exercise in atmosphere and ambience and as close to a Jean Michel Jarre soundscape as NIN gets. As it played, I watched the Midas-touched ocean and felt those magical cookies combine with the music to give me an experience I’ve never forgotten.

I felt like I could trace every glistening motion of the waters. My dilated eyes swallowed the sea’s vastness and my mind filled with Reznor’s simple but deeply poetic words. By the drifting finale of The Great Below I had tears running down my cheeks. Everything was beautiful; tragically so. The world had become somehow simultaneously vast and miniscule in the space of a 5-minute song, and I felt anew.

I turned to my mate, who had opted to listen to Rammstein. He looked like he’d just survived a near-death experience, but it didn’t stop us having another nibble of those magic cookies later that evening.
Anyway, back to the album.

I’ve never enjoyed Right Disc as much as Left Disc. There just doesn’t feel like there are quite as many, um, “bangers” on it, and it places a greater emphasis on soundscapes than structured songs. Don’t get me wrong: the atmosphere is still haunting and often engaging, and there are certainly a handful of unforgettable moments.

Into the Void is a great tune with a heavy 80s influence; Please is a satisfyingly noisy blast of industrial rock; Complication has a wonderfully breezy sense of fine-tuned malice.

But then I start to struggle, and in honesty some of Trent’s lyrics here make me cringe. Where is Everybody? is like a bizarre attempt at an industrial hip-hop song, but with piss-weak lyrics. Then we have the dull-as-paint I’m Looking Forward to Joining You, which follows two of Right Disc’s best songs with a minimalist barely-there beat and yet more dreary lyrics.

If only there could have been more tracks like Starfuckers, Inc on Right Disc, which is a blistering shock of drum ‘n’ bass-infused energy that once again showcases Trent Reznor’s scrupulous song-writing and production flair. It’s an obvious single with a catchy verse and an even catchier chorus, and I find it impossible not to nod my head and sing along each time I hear it.

The final track Ripe (With Decay) is barely a conclusion at all, and feels almost like a musical phrase which ends on an unresolved note. It’s repetitive and haunting, and serves as an introspective comedown rather than a crescendo.

The problem for me lies in the epic length of The Fragile, which I don’t feel is complemented by the meandering pace of Right Disc. When I spend two full hours on a single album, I need a strong reason to keep listening, and while the bewitching Left Disc is knitted together by effective song structures and the occasional instrumental, I can’t say the same of Right Disc. Perhaps that was Reznor’s intention – or perhaps the scope of the album was difficult to keep in check and remain focused.
​
Overall, though, it’s a magnificent achievement. I find it hard to think of another album I have enjoyed so consistently for over 2 decades as The Fragile, and returning to it to write this review has been a pleasure. Perhaps without the freedom to explore all the sonic textures and styles as Trent did, which resulted in those weaker tracks and sections, it would have emerged a far less significant album. Maybe it was only by embracing total creative freedom and risking those lows was he able to shape an album of such resonant, consistent highs.

We've taken a slight pause for the cause in the NIN at 30 project, with our review of The Downward Spiral and its spin-off Further Down The Spiral already in the rear-view mirror. So this one is something of a special feature to look at one of the band's most iconic live performances – Woodstock 94, often better known as Mudstock.

Woodstock 94 was a festival to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1969 festival, headlined by the likes of Metallica, Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was notable for a couple of things; firstly the impact it had as a pay-per-show for MTV, estimated to have been seen in 24 million homes. It might be hard for younger readers to imagine, but there was once a time when MTV carried mostly music, and often very good music. Secondly, it was a weekend renowned for the pure logistical chaos that surrounded the event. With approximate 164,000 tickets sold for the event, the final crowd estimate was just over half a million – all of which contributed to the glorious chaos that was one of Nine Inch Nails' finest hours on stage.

This was a show that brought the band to many people's attention to the first time, and as the grind of Pinion heralded the arrival of the members of the band one by one – covered in mud after the excessive rainfall of the day itself – Reznor's own appearance on the stage brought things to another level of intensity. It's fair to say that the circumstances led to what could well be considered a lack of polish – there were also a number of technical issues throughout the show – but many would argue this brought the best of a band like Nine Inch Nails, who were truly at the peak of their powers here.

The band pounds through many of the heavier tracks from Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral – Something I Can Never Have is actually one of very few quiet, more reflective  moments. In the maelstrom of mud and mayhem, it's almost as though the frustrations of the occasion pour out in crunching renditions of Reptile, March of the Pigs, Wish and the opening double-header of Terrible Lie and Sin. The reaction from the crowd is rapturous, and it's notable that this set stood out so much among so many of the other rock luminaries taking part in the show over the weekend. It cemented NIN as a band with something new and something fresh to say, a voice the likes of which many of their contemporaries of longer standing were not able to offer.

The pace and brutality never lets up throughout, and it's notable to me watching this performance back that Hurt was not the closing song – it's been so long associated as the finale of a Nine Inch Nails show, and having seen the band live it's an absolutely incredible note to close on. Here we finish with Head Like a Hole, which feels like a suitably anarchic note to polish off this performance on.

Live music in the flesh is often an incredible experience, but sometimes when you watch it at home it distinctly loses something. Mudstock 94 feels like a notable exception – the songs feel like they have an added edge to them, and the crowd response feels almost palpable. It's also a performance that did a huge amount to further boost the growing profile of the group, which is likely a part of what has made it so significant in NIN history. Equally it's one of those performances that could have gone horribly wrong – in fact Reznor himself has often been reported as hating this show, dogged as it was with technological issues. But this set feels like the eye of the perfect storm that was Woodstock 1994. With a good few years until The Fragile came around, an album often seen as Reznor's magnum opus – although its still huge success still paled in comparison to The Downward Spiral – this was a show that served as a reminder not to forget this band, their energy and their sound.
 
Next time around will be a detailed look at The Fragile, and we still have another live special to follow soon too...

I’ve always done things a little differently. I used to make Airfix models as a kid and having assembled my Messerschmitt Bf 109 – and only stuck my fingers to the chassis twice – I turned over the box to regard the options for painting. The first, and most prevalent, was perfect for duelling Spitfires over the Channel. Ducking and diving, trying to get a bead on the plucky Allied pilot and take them down.

Cool.

Or…there was option B, painted in the colours of Rommel’s desert campaign. No cloud cover, prime real estate for a fighter plane. Two choices, what to do?

Option 3. Some batshit crazy paint scheme that exists only in the twisted synapses of my brain, some weird blend of the two, but with extra cool stuff.
Option 3. It was always option 3.

In many regards, it was the same when I was getting into music. I would seek out an album to find my way in, yet time and time again, I’d eschew the popular and pick the outsider. Option 3 as it were. The first Pop Will Eat Itself album I ever bought was their live album, ‘At Weird’s Bar and Grill’. Slipknot, was ‘Iowa’, Green Day was ‘Kerplunk’. Time and time again, the first crack I’d give a band was one of their odd albums, which most fans would put towards the bottom of their list.

The same applies with Nine Inch Nails. When Alex asked what album I wanted, I knew which one I hoped was still free. As I saw him type on Messenger, no doubt informing me that The Fragile, Downward Spiral and With Teeth had already gone, I replied with four words.

Further. Down. The. Spiral.

There are a number of reasons why this album stands out for me, both musically and personally. Before I delve into the tracks, I’ll paint a picture of where I was in my life when I heard the (quite frankly bonkers) opening track.

I’m twenty years old, have just landed my first proper full-time job, sending bits of paper out for a financial company in Salisbury, the city of my birth. I’ve literally been living there for a month and I’m in a crappy bedsit above an art gallery at the bottom of Brown Street.

Life is pretty shit…not wanting to put a downer on it, but at that moment in time, life is sucking the sweaty balls of an obese person who has been doing squats for two hours straight. I’ve just split up with my first ever proper girlfriend, am living twenty odd miles away from my chums, in a tiny L-shaped room that contains all my worldly possessions. On Friday nights, there is a guy I bump into in the shared kitchen who makes chip butties with bread that is lined by green mould. He eats it, telling me in his Irish brogue, “Ma said that the green bits are the dessert part of the meal.” Of course it is. Little wonder I keep an eye on him to make sure the drunk motherfucker doesn’t pass out and set fire to us all.

Aside from the odd trip home to see people – I was still not on speaking terms with my parents after a rather fractious leaving home, music was pretty much all I had. Sure, in six months, life would turn around and I’d be in better digs, but right then? It was all way too much for me.

Coupled with all of that, I was still getting to grips with my mental state, and though I’d dealt with the more extreme urges of my personality, I was still fighting my brain every day to keep myself above water. It was a struggle, and again, Future-Me would love nothing more than to have left me a note telling Old-Me that it would be okay, that I’d find a way to be able to control the things that I worried every day would push me over the edge.

This album, this fucking album…it sums up perfectly that moment in my life. It’s a snapshot of the turmoil I was going through in my head.

I’d heard of Nine Inch Nails for years, but with a list of bands as long as time itself that I wanted to get into, it took me some time to get to them. The fact that it’s a remix album matters not one jot. Further Down The Spiral cranks into life with ‘Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)’, which lulls you in gently, before smashing you in the face with break beats and a churning maelstrom of industrial drums and chugging riffs.

Bear in mind, I’d never even heard The Downward Spiral by this point, so had no point of reference. But with the benefit of hindsight, I find Trent’s vocals on this, and most of the other songs, way clearer than the album they’re pulled from. ‘Piggy’ just builds and builds, dropping off for a temporary respite, before that last final assault. In that tiny dingy room, it was filled with those crunching guitars and nasty ass drums, before finally petering out with that wonderful little sample.

The next two tracks are essentially the same song, but oh so very different. Even listening to them now, puts me right back to where I was then. The first, ‘The Art Of Self Destruction, Part One’, is a claustrophobic affair. The lyrics are literal whispers through the speakers straight into your brain. “I am the voice in your head,” like, seriously, no shit. It’s insidious, the way it expands into every part of your skull, the sinister, “I control you,” said over and over again, simultaneously a promise and a status report. It’s the 1984 of songs. As you relax into it, give yourself to it, the tempo cranks up, the beat becomes discordant, the ordered opening gives way to chaos, to opposing thoughts and ideas.

It breaks perfectly into, ‘Self Destruction, Part Three’. This is the mania to the depression from the previous song. It just doesn’t let you settle. Always on the move, twisting, turning, pushing you this way and that, dropping you off only so it can deliver its sermon, before the now eerie, “I control you,” becomes a fact. It’s not up for debate any more, you’re pulled with it.

And then, BOOM. The adrenaline leaves you, and you’re deposited in a near-empty soundscape. Catching your breath, you can feel it building again. Pressing against the bone of your skull, and sure enough, it bursts back into life once more, the urgency and insistence is all-pervading, stripping you of the ability to do what you want.

‘Heresy (Version)’, is a blessed relief after the rollercoaster you’ve been exposed to so far, far more clinical and industrial in tone. If you stripped the vocals out, it could almost be a Rammstein song. A thunderous march from the bipolar beginning into the more stable middle part of the album. To be honest, you need it, I need it. ‘The Downward Spiral (The Bottom)’, takes it down a notch, haunting, aching, breathless, before descending into a techno blip-blop-blop which sets you up for what comes next. You know what’s coming up, don’t you? Were you ready that first time?

‘Hurt (Live)’, is a song that once you hear, breaks you down into your constituent parts and leaves you there for some considerable time. If ever there was a song that summed up how I felt right there and then, it’s this, and I know I wasn’t the only one. Today, people have the debate about which version is better, this one or Johnny Cash’s. For me, as good as The Man In Black’s version is - and it is a belter - it pales next to this version.

It’s raw, it’s breaking inside of you, it starts off kinda clunky, let’s be honest, but dear god…the crowd quietens and Reznor starts to sing. The music blooms as you get to that first chorus, building, building…you can feel it swell inside of you. Fingernails digging into the palms of your hands, teeth gritted, everything inside of you focused on those damn fucking words.

For me, it’s the best thing he ever wrote, it’s the sum of everything he aspired to in his early work. Stripped back, without any of the layers of noise you normally associate with NIN, this simple song is the soundtrack for those emotions that threaten to overwhelm you. Yet, it offers hope as much as it envelops suffering. Sure, it’s not your atypical, “let’s get a cup of tea and everything will be fine,” but you don’t want it that way. I didn’t at least. ‘Hurt’, leaves you bent over, broken, but knowing that the past is just a guide of where you’ve been, not of where you’re going.

Jesus, I went down a rabbit hole there. Hope you’re still with me? You are? Good work!  Honestly, that song is in my top three of all-time, and if any of you have any firm thoughts on it, let me know. I’ll even debate which version is better if you want. *insert smiley face*

With most albums, I’d put them on before going to work, or heading out in the evening for beer, so the back end of albums never really got that much attention, this one included. But, when you have four tracks in the first six that have tested your serotonin levels, you need a break.

‘At The Heart Of It All’, definitely gives you that, letting you compose yourself after the emotional tide you’ve ridden to this point. You don’t really think too much about it at the time, but later on when you read up about it, it is kinds odd that a song that NIN didn’t actually do is on here at all. But hey! It’s Aphex Twin, so you can’t complain. It’s like finding a bonus box of Christmas sweets at the back of the cupboard in February.

‘Ruiner (Version)’, unlike most of the songs, is quite one-dimensional, rarely dropping too low, or changing too much in tone and feeling. If anything, you’d kinda feel that with this up front ahead of ‘Piggy’ - especially given the last line, “nothing can stop me now” - might have made better use of it.
‘Eraser (Denial; Realization)’, is another that is perfect for background noise, but personally doesn’t do a great deal. It’s the classic remix song, where you end up playing the original and realising that there isn’t much you could do to make it better. It does chug along quite nicely, and the final third plays on the twisted psyche feel that this album really manages to do so well.

There were a number of different versions of the album, and the UK one ends up with ‘Self Destruction, Final’, which pulls in all of the elements from those that have been before. It isn’t a patch on the two earlier versions, instead blending the two together. To me it feels an unnecessary inclusion, especially given what else they could have used from the album they were remixing. Familiar loops play, and whilst it’s not terrible, it just feels like déjà vu.

Remix albums go two ways, they either offer you something wonderfully different, PWEI’s ‘Two Fingers My Friends’, is a good example, whilst others are just a waste of time, a shameless cash-grab. This is definitely in the former, as when I finally picked up ‘The Downward Spiral’ a few years later, although I enjoyed it, I found that a number of the songs seemed more distinct and purposeful on this album. Piggy, Self Destruction, and of course Hurt are the obvious ones, but I guess that is also the benefit of such a venture.
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A big thanks to Alex for asking me to be a part of this. It had been a few years since I’d listened to this album from start to finish, and it really has not lost the impact that it had on me all those years ago. Sometimes, you need to put it away for a little while. Because some things leave an indelible mark, and remind you of times that, although long gone, could return at any moment. All you can hope to have in life are the things you truly love, music for me, is one of those.
 
Cheers.

The summer blockbuster book! Probably.

With an encyclopaedic knowledge of cake, and exclusive access to the church’s stockpile of holy weapons, the Order of the Crimson Rosary are on the frontline in the eternal war between good and evil. Whether it’s repelling demonic possession, judging the authenticity of supposed miracles or having the final say on the colour of bunting at church fetes, the organisation's members sacrifice their own freedom to keep the world safe.

Father Flynn, the top operative in the UK, has been responsible for a number of recent high profile gaffs. Given an ultimatum, he must choose between returning to his old job of preserving the last microfiche machine in the church’s library, or submit himself for rehabilitation.

Yet evil doesn’t take a ticket and wait in line, as the dreaded cannibal nuns from outer space land to begin their annual harvest. Can Flynn get himself sober enough to repel their evil machinations? Or will another idyllic British village become the nun’s latest buffet?

One thing’s for certain, to beat them, Father Flynn is going to have to kick the habit.

Book two in the GoreCom series, this time it's highly trained priests facing off against the titular cannibal nuns from outer space. Can the finest Crimson Rosary operatives in the UK thwart the nefarious plan to reduce another population centre to compote?

I try to avoid looking up what albums and songs mean for the artists that wrote them. It gets in the way of my own creativity. With each line of lyrics, I like to have at least two different ways to hear them and let them turn through me and mix around with whatever I’m working on and whatever else I’m listening to.

Without You I’m Nothing is one of the albums I listen to the most. It became my favourite album while I was at college studying media as the only girl in the class. I’d be picked on for my tastes and the boyfriend I was with at the time thought the music I listened to was too mainstream, so I hid behind a wall of black metal. College was also the first time someone tried to take my creativity away from me instead of encouraging it, taking away everything that made me, me and gift it back as a corruption of what once was.

Placebo is still my favourite band, but this album was moved down to second most favourite album of all time during university. I’m not writing about my favourite album at this point in time as it is too close to Sparky the Spunky Robot’s release date (22 February 2019) and I don’t want to give any of the tricks in the narration away until people have a chance to read it and form their own opinions. I’m hoping Gingernuts of Horror will have me back at some future date to write about my favourite album and what impact it had on Sparky.
 
Pure Morning

“Our thoughts compressed, Which makes us blessed, And makes for stormy weather”

To me, it sounds like enmeshment and a toxic relationship. What I’ve been working on right now, Era Two (or Tainted Love/Push the Button across my social media pages) is all about toxic relationships and there’s some enmeshment going on.
 
Brick shithouse

“When you come(cum) you never make a single sound”

Even during the Dark Days, this particular lyric would come up when I was writing. It could be a sociopath or a peeping tom watching from the bushes or the doorframe in silence. Watching someone sleep. Someone zoning out during sex so they aren’t reacting. Someone never making a noise during sex. Someone gagged. There’s so much I can do with it and it can go in so many different directions.
 
You Don’t Care About Us

“You're too complicated, we should separate it You're just confiscating, you're exasperating This degeneration, mental masturbation Think I'll leave it all behind, save this bleeding heart of mine”

Much like Pure Morning, it is hard to pinpoint an exact way in which You Don’t Care About Us has seeped into my writing. What first attracted me to Placebo was the way the lyrics fit so well together while still being simple words. Writing a song and writing a book are a bit different, but I do try to get my words to fit together like Placebo lyrics. 56 Seconds is the most noticeable. But even with Sparky the Spunky Robot, I wanted it to read really easily and then have the reader going back to see if there’s anything underneath it. Sometimes if I’m stuck on something, I’ll say these lyrics.
 
Ask for Answers

“These bonds are shackle free, wrapped in lust and lunacy. Tiny touch of jealousy, these bonds are shackle free”

“Wrapped in…” must be one of the most common phrases I’ve been using in Era Two.

Ask for Answers was the first thing I thought of when someone described what sounds like a very intense trauma bond to me. He presented this woman and apparently the love as of his life as someone who had been badly abused. And then said, there’s an undeniable bond. He didn’t describe anything positive about this woman. It was all bad things that happened to her at some point in the past and the more he said, the more toxic she sounded, as well as the people surrounding her (and him). They’ve got their children wrapped up in all of this, so they’re telling the next generation, “hey, be miserable and enmesh yourself in other people’s problems and be shallow”. But he could just walk away from it all. I did create the Tentacle Queen based on this (see Burger Queen below).
 
Without You I’m Nothing

“I'm unclean, a libertine And every time you vent your spleen I seem to lose the power of speech You're slipping slowly from my reach You grow me like an evergreen You've never seen the lonely me at all”

I wanted to copy and paste all the lyrics. I love this song. It is one of my favourite songs of all time. I’ve gone with what flows the best. But the beginning may have had the most influence upon my work.

This is not a concept I believe in, but it is something I enjoy exploring in writing. So many times, I have heard something along the lines of he/she/they complete me. People should be complete before they enter relationships. Era Two (Tainted Love/Push the Button) explores the incompletion.

Marcy loses 56 seconds of her soul and the books and stories explore her trying to claw back each piece. Having her identity stolen by Kord so he could complete her, because she was whole at the start of Strip/Becoming. It is something I’ve experienced myself when people aren’t respecting my boundaries. They’re trying to take away something I had as a part of me and then replace it with what they say it should be. Nothing more than a shallow corruption of what once was. A large part of Era Two (Tainted Love/Push the Button) is healing from all of this, while clawing back my old levels of creativity. I’m no longer doing things for the sake of doing them like I was during the Dark Days when I churned out book and story after book and story at 5AM, often to a brief. I’m taking song lyrics and books and everything else and corrupting it in my own way and making it into something new, like I used to do.

The people I speak to with this needing another half seem to rest their happiness on another person. Even if the other person is as close to perfect as can be, that’s a lot of pressure. This needing another person to feel complete is something I had pounded into me from childhood. It was one of the first things I set out to change while at university and in a pretty miserable relationship with that same college boyfriend mentioned earlier. Going out in the world, I discovered a lot of people hold firm to this belief.

My writing in a post #metoo world has been exploring this and looking at all the ways relationships can and do turn toxic after lots of interactions with people and (now ex) partners with the point of view that everyone needs someone to complete them. Every time I have raised an objection to needing someone to complete me, I get silenced.

This is the song that speaks to me the most on the album (and out of all the Placebo songs). And I like the general flow of the song.
 
Allergic (to thoughts of Mother Earth)

“Don't let me down”

Everyone is going to let you down. At some point in Era Two, Faded Star is going to let Marcy down. Marcy is either in love with or idealises Faded Star. She isn’t sure. Love and lust are often mistaken for each other. But one story, and she’ll come for him in the night and carry him off to the Forest of the Dead. Because he’s only human. He can and will let people down, even if light does shine out of his arsehole.
 
The Crawl

“It's way too broke to fix No glue, no bag of tricks”

Every relationship in Era Two is broken and traumatic. The characters themselves are broken, with Marcy and Donnie being the two that most operate in the grey areas of a somewhat balanced individual. Faded Star is too good (although I am trying to tone that down a bit). The Tentacle Queen and her minions are too evil and manipulative. Honey is an empty shell always glued to her phone or screaming inside Donnie’s head. There isn’t much middle ground in the characters mentality. These characters are too broken to fix.
 
Every You Every Me

“Carve your name into my arm Instead of stressed I lie here charmed 'Cause there's nothing else to do”

This is one of X/Xanthe’s songs (“Theatrum Mortuum” in VSX and The Year’s Best Hardcore Horror 3), along with a few other Placebo songs. Including My Sweet Prince (although not as important as Post Blue from the Meds album or The Never-ending Why from Battle for the Sun). X/Xanthe was conceived while at the day job one icy Tuesday morning during the Dark Days. I had a deadline and no notebook with me so I found my morbidly obese goth arse trying to run down the street to get home. I was in a particularly foul mood about having to go to the day job. At some point I had tried to pick up the pieces of my life (I don’t know how much time had passed) by setting up a business. Setting up a business is stressful enough with the right support. During this time, I had a lot of negativity around me and people trying to strip away my identity and replace it with what they wanted me to be, right down to my son’s school. This was a pre #metoo world so phoning the police was never an option. I’m guessing my boyfriend at the time didn’t like me trying to regain some independence. The character basis for X/Xanthe is one of his friends. I thought she was my friend too, until she wanted to sleep with me while I was trying to set up this business and clutch back the pieces of my life. I’m straight and pretty prudish, but even if I wasn’t, that wouldn’t have been the time to do that. The boyfriend failed to grasp why I was upset and no longer wanted this person anywhere near me. I didn’t even have any words of comfort from him. I don’t really know how this song came to be associated with X/Xanthe, except it happened on that Tuesday morning. Theatrum Mortuum was called Sucker Love in the first draft. I’ve been working on another X/Xanthe story and novel, before I bring her back in Smothered Hope. I guess people like torture porn as she seems to be a reader favourite.

“Carve your name into my arm”.

In 56 Seconds, Honey has carved her name into Donnie’s mind, but he still can’t remember it. The song was playing when I added that part. I’m sure song has an impact on my writing without consciously thinking about it, like I did with Honey and X/Xanthe.
 
My Sweet Prince

“Me and the dragon can chase all the pain away”

With X/Xanthe I viewed the Prince as being heroin. Once I had the heroin in place on that icy Tuesday morning, I had my story. X/Xanthe wakes up in the Forest of the Dead. She is dead. Does she still have an addiction in Theatrum Mortuum (Reprised)?

Heroin plays a big part in some of the Era Two stories, at least in note form. I’ve written Tainted 07 (unpublished), a short story and the opening paragraph is used syringes. I grew up in the USA, but I haven’t been back since the heroin epidemic. There was a time at some point during the Dark Days where I was getting one or two phone calls or messages per day saying someone I grew up with or went to school with had passed away. Although I only lost one inner circle friend to heroin, it has an impact.

There’s no poppies in the meadow in the Forest of the Dead. They’ve been used to manufacture heroin.

Taking dragon as a literal mythical creature, the first story in Era Two is “The Last Human” and the theme for that anthology (Where There Are Dragons – an anthology of mixed emotions) was dragons. Since that first story, I’ve been trying to reference dragons in each (although I’m sure I’ve cut them out during editing in some of them). No dragon, then there’s heroin.
 
Summer’s Gone

“You try to break the mould Before you get too old You try to break the mould Before you die”

Donnie, the washed-up deejay with two rings in his pocket. An engagement ring and a cock ring. Bound in trauma to the Tentacle Queen, he rides his white horse through the Forest of the Dead and licks the trees. I first introduce him in 56 Seconds as having a total lack of social skills and borderline rage dying on the sheets after sending jerk off footage to either Marcy or Honey. The rings themselves switch. The engagement ring is for Honey, the cock ring is for Marcy. The cock ring is for Honey, the engagement is for Marcy.

He’s old and aging. Honey can step out of the cage inside his head for four seconds and erase the lines around his eyes with her thumb. He’s trapped in a 56 second drum loop and that carries over to other Era Two stories he appears in.

Each time the horse dies, he starts to lick the tainted honey that oozes out of the trees. It is his own way of trying to break out and escape the same cycle he has been in.
 
Scared of Girls

“The earth did open Swallow whole”

Darcy is swallowed by the Void and then she climbs back out again, past mass graves and disturbs the dead. The Child That Has Always Been is swallowed by the Forest of the Dead in The Daisies That Open at Midnight. The ground opens to swallow her body.

“Her younger sister, had a blister Where I kissed her on her thigh”
                 
Love (cum) drips down Honey’s thigh. This is where that came from.
 
Burger Queen

“Things aren't what they seem Makes no sense at all”

I reworded this song to be about the Tentacle Queen while being informed of someone’s ex-girlfriend (see Ask for Answers). She sounded just like every other ex-girlfriend described to me, toxic, yet infatuating. The bonds of trauma and lust are strong. Beloved by hundreds yet sounds like she cuts a sad figure like the person described in the song. He didn’t have anything positive to say about this woman. She sounds like she uses past trauma to manipulate people into feeling sorry for her, so she gets looked after (the vampire queen).

The entire group of people associated sound like they’re bound together with trauma and emotional manipulation and one-upmanship (“out-narcing frenemies”, a phrase I used a lot in Strip/Becoming, which was written before I knew this group of people existed). When a large group of people is encouraging a disordered person to behave like that, instead of questioning their behaviour, it drags down the entire group. I’m not sure if there’s any medical or scientific backing for this, but if the disordered person is challenged, then maybe, that would give them the proverbial slap outside the head they need instead of dragging down everyone around them.

The person who described this to me has flashes of intelligence and insight and even works a creative industries job. I try not to project my experiences onto other people after ten additional years of narcissistic abuse, but he basically described, without knowing what I’ve been through, what I’ve been trying to escape from. When I was wrapped up in all of that, I would get the occasional flashes of insight and creativity, but my personality had been so drained, these were becoming fewer and further apart. When I did finally get away, I was left very confused. My memories were disjointed. I don’t want anyone to experience what I have. It isn’t very nice. I’m going to be picking up the pieces for a few more years yet, until I have at the very least, the very practical things I require to properly move on. My stress levels vary to between post-traumatic to non-existent, with more around the non-existent or every day types of stress these days.

This group of people described to me have children between them, which is where the Tentacle Queen’s children come from. The Child That Has Always Been is her own child. Donnie’s kidnapped daughter, so she’s wrapping Donnie’s child in her world and teaching her how to get what she wants by not lifting a finger (or hook in the children’s cases, she cuts off their hands so she can have their fingerbones for her necklace). She is in the middle of hatching a third (Caught on the Outside).

She first appears in The Daisies That Open at Midnight. She owns Joyce and Kord, they both have the mark of a devil. She’s more than a devil. She is the Void. People like that are a void. They suck away life and happiness and anything positive about living and leave confusion and self-doubt behind, while making the person or persons on the receiving end believe they need that person in their life.

In the Forest of the Dead, where The Daisies That Open at Midnight is set, illusions are washed away. I’m still writing it and having a vampiric land octopus played seriously is rather difficult. In other stories, she wears a mask to hide behind, which is what narcissists and people with other personality disorders do. To an extent, we all wear masks around certain people, but the Tentacle Queen has a latex mask. She’s the brothel owner between worlds. The place where men (and women) go when they want servicing by a sexbot.

Creating the Tentacle Queen was the first time I used this song in my writing on any conscious level.

Evil Dildo (the secret track).

I don’t like this one as much as I like Black Market Blood, the secret track on Black Market Music. Once Burger Queen is over, I used to switch off the disc and then skip to the next track on my ipod. And then Spotify happened so if I listen to the album on Spotify, I usually end up with this song blasting in my ears. One day, it might play a role in my art or writing, but today is (probably) not that day.

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...

When I developed the idea of the Nine Inch Nails at 30 project, there were a huge number of albums that I was really looking forward to getting stuck into. And I have to say, in all honesty, Fixed was not high among them. While the precursor piece, Broken, remains an absolute favourite, the remix album that accompanies it doesn't rank highly or live long in the memory among a catalogue of brilliant releases from the band. Just think – next on the slate was The Downward Spiral, an album that truly deserves its reputation as a seminal piece of industrial/alternative music.

Fixed was released relatively quickly after Broken, emerging a mere three months later, which at the least suggests that it was something that was in the works the whole time and was certainly not any kind of cash-in after the success of Broken – in fact that concept wouldn't find the Trent Reznor MO in the least. Despite never hitting the chart heights of its predecessor, Fixed was certified Platinum in the UK (selling over 300,000 copies) and reached a high position of 6 in the Canadian charts. It would  also be the first in a series of remix albums from Nine Inch Nails, which has since offered up Further Down The Spiral, Things Falling Apart, Year Zero Remixed and a slightly more obscure Remix 2014 album that followed on from Hesitation Marks.

While Fixed certainly picks up much stylistically from Broken, I feel that in adding more dance and electronic elements the album somehow loses the raw, furious edge that made it so memorable. It's fair to say that numerous of the tracks have their moments, but many don't really stay with me as song in full. If I had to pin down a favourite I feel like the extended version of Wish – the second track on the album – is a very good one. The opener, Gave Up, has a couple of very engaging sections but overall doesn't feel as though it gels together as a track. On the rest of the album there are two remixes of Happiness in Slavery – which has never been my favourite from the Broken record at the best of times – as well as the decent Throw it Away, which blends elements of Suck and Last in a solid if not spectacular combination. I would imagine that in a different context to sitting at home – say in an industrial/metal club – many of these tracks would go down a treat and have the potential to fill a dancefloor. But as a top to bottom listen I would tend to say this is the least inspired NIN album – not to say that it's bad, but when you set the bar high your work is always going to be compared to your better and your best output. While some fans have shown something of a dislike towards the more recent EPs, each of those I feel has substantially more highpoints than this one.

While Broken retains an elements of freshness due to the fury that seems to drip from every note, Fixed does feel firmly like a product of the nineties. Maybe the lustre has just fallen off this one slightly over time –  I remember the remix album still being a thing of excitement when they were first released. It could even be that maybe the content of Broken is less suitable for remixing, with less different and varied elements to pull upon that NIN's next two albums, which served to propel them from stardom to megastardom. If there are more exciting elements of the music to pull at in the first place, you're liable to have a better remix album all around.

If you're new to NIN, I certainly wouldn't suggest starting here – as I say, it's still a good 6.5 or 7 out of 10, but that makes it for me the weakest of thirty years of output. If you want an intro to the band, there's plenty that's worth a 9 or even a 10 out of 10 that I'd suggest going with first. Ultimately Fixed might be rather more an album for the aficionado than the casual fan.

Next time around, it'll be time for The Downward Spiral...
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Having made an almighty impact with their debut album Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails were a band that produced some of their most famous work – and indeed a number of their bestselling albums – throughout the 90s. Pretty Hate Machine was a platinum album in its own right, but even that would pale in comparison to the incredible success of The Downward Spiral and The Fragile to come.

But before all that, we had the first of a number of EPs that would emerge from the NIN stable, Broken. This one emerged three year’s after the band’s debut, coming in 1992 after an extended feud and continued legal battle with TVT. The crux of the matter was that TVT wanted an album more like Pretty Hate Machine, with the hope that it would produce a number of successful singles in the vein of Head Like a Hole. However Trent Reznor was keen to get away from that sound, and objected to the ‘synth-pop’ label that TVT was attempting to apply to the band. The album was recorded largely in secret to avoid record company interference, and finally emerged in 1992 as a hybrid co-release of Interscope, TVT and Nothing Records – a label Reznor set up with John Malm Jr that ran until 2007.

To say this was a departure from the 80’s friendly Pretty Hate Machine would be an understatement. As a teenager growing up through the 90’s, Nine Inch Nails kind of perfectly captured the directionless anger that myself and many of my friends were feeling at the time. I did come to it a few years after its initial release, but even now it holds a lot of power as a slice of pure, inchoate rage that you can’t help but feel energised when you listen to. For many fans it sits alongside the band’s very best work, and is undoubtedly the most consistently heavy release, with its genre typically being marked as industrial metal. There’s no Something I Can Never Have, Hurt or Right Where it Belongs to alleviate the brutality here. It’s easy to argue that this is an album that bottles all of Reznor’s frustrations at the time, and maybe that kind of emotional rawness is what has kept it a special place in the heart of many NIN fans.

We kick off with a short introductory track in the shape of ‘Pinion’ – this short, disjointed lead song has arguably become something of a trademark for the band since this album – before we launch into the furious double-header of ‘Wish’ and ‘Last’, which feel like an absolute slap in the face to truly demand your attention. The elements of electronica are still in there, but backed up in both cases by meaty guitar riffs that embody far more of a 90’s sound. Both remain live favourites to this day, and it’s easy to see why – they’re absolutely bound to get a crowd pumped up and into things live.

Those two are followed by ‘Help Me I Am In Hell’ – another lyricless track that provides a sort of bridge between slices of heaviness – before ‘Happiness in Slavery’, another angst-filled metal track that really captured the feel of the times and the generation that was listening to it. ‘Gave Up’ and ‘Suck’ are two further classic towards the end of this album, with probably my least favourite track of the album – a cover of Adam and The Ants’ ‘Physical’ wedged inbetween. Although the album only runs to thirty minutes, it somehow feels much more epic and meaningful than you might expect, and it’s fair to say it made an impression at the time, with reviews employing words such as ‘vicious’ ‘rabid’, ‘nihilistic’, and ‘shocking’. I feel those fit the bill pretty well.

It’s also hard to let this review pass without a mention of the notorious music videos, which made up a short proto-snuff horror film that stirred controversy time and time again. Numerous of the individual videos were banned, or had to have alternative versions made to accommodate censors, and a full version of the film remains an incredibly elusive thing to find. The whole thing has never been officially released, with Reznor apparently worried that the videos could take away from the music, so it remains something of a holy grail for fans of the band.

Overall, Broken sees a very different Nine Inch Nails from the one the emerged in 1992, and to me remains one of the most lively and energetic metal albums around, one I often turn to when I’m feeling a bubbling rage at something or other. It doesn’t always cure it, but it’s nice to know somebody feels the same. This type of aggressive blast would be seen in bits and pieces in future records, but never as consistently as here.

Next up we’ll be taking a look at one of the many Nine Inch Nails remix albums, 1993’s Fixed.

Over the course of 2019, here at Ginger Nuts of Horror and as part of the ongoing ‘Devil’s Music’ project, I’ll be leading on a retrospective of the musical career of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails.
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And what better place to start than at the beginning?

Pretty Hate Machine was released from TVT Records on October 20th 1989, and would serve to be a tumultuous beginning to what was often a dark and rocky start to things for Nine Inch Nails. Despite its success – being the first independently released album to be certified platinum – Reznor fell out with TVT records, whom he believed were impinging upon his creative freedom. None of that stopped this album achieving incredible success, with an 80’s inspired synth feeling that would rarely be replicated again for the band. In fact in listening to every NIN album it’s telling just how different this one feels – it might sound reductive to say it as the only album the band released in the 80s, but much if it still feels really 80s. The follow-up EP, Broken, almost sounds like it could have been made by an entirely different band and is suffused with a bleakness and rage that’s rarely found here.

It’s easy to see why Pretty Hate Machine made an impression on release, as it captures some of the best of the synth-pop and industrial music of the 80s with a slightly angstier, uneasier edge. Launching with a track like Head Like a Hole doesn’t hurt – it’s a real statement opener that has remained a live staple of the band over the years, and is likely the band’s most covered song to date. My other standout track on a personal level is Something I Can Never Have, a much more melancholic and softer track that feels like a significantly better fit with much more of the band’s later work. By paring back so much of the electronic sound and zooming in on a key piano ‘riff’, this one leaps out a mile stylistically as well as in bottling a slightly different mood to many of the other tracks. It’s stunningly reproduced on Still, even more pared down than this already sparse original.

There are plenty of other great tracks on this one too – at its best Pretty Hate Machine has a wonderful energy to it, best epitomised by songs such as Terrible Lie, Sin and That’s What I Get. Sin of course comes with a notorious music video, not even played at the time due to some of its adult content and only emerging into the public eye far later on. With that said, there are a few tracks that rather blend into one for me, and Sanctified, The Only Time and Ringfinger are not songs that live especially long in the memory. However I think the album as a whole is a rewarding and powerful experience, but looking back with thirty years of perspective I’d say this was very much a starting point for significantly better to come. You could argue this was a process of the very strong 80’s sound being ‘exorcised’ from the band, and while elements of that would remain in later releases I feel like this is the one album that doesn’t sound very current when you listen to it in 2019. Many people in their artistic bents seem to lean towards the early work of a band, author or filmmaker, and I often go the opposite way – which is also the case here.

Pretty Hate Machine is a very fine album in its own right, and would provide the foundation and stepping stone for the mega-successes of albums like The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. It’s not my favourite, but it is an album I turn to when I feel like I need some retro, synth-driven industrial tracks in my life. Strangely enough, I’m probably more of a fan of many of these songs performed live – the opening salve of Terrible Lie and Sin on All That Could Have Been is incredible, and maybe it’s just a matter that and added musical maturity has leaked into the more recent renditions.

Next time around we’ll be leaping a few years forward to look at 1992’s Broken EP.

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In 1989, Nine Inch Nails – Trent Reznor's unique industrial music project – smashed onto the scene with Pretty Hate Machine. Thirty years on, NIN retain a cult following and a reputation as one of the fiercest and most singular bands out there, and throughout 2019 Ginger Nuts of Horror will be celebrating this landmark anniversary with a host of album, EP and live reviews and articles.

I've been a huge fan of the band for many years, although I can't claim to have been around from the very get-go – I was eight when Pretty Hate Machine hit, and came to the band as a teenager with one of NIN's most famous releases, The Downward Spiral. It's hard to describe the effect an album like that can have on a fourteen year old, but it was incredibly formative for me musically and creatively, seeming to capture so much of my feelings around that time of my life.
 
Over the years, the music of Nine Inch Nails has been a constant companion, and something that I have turned to at times both good and bad. The absolute fury of Broken has provided a catharsis in times of frustration, the energy of With Teeth has offered up motivation when the impetus was sorely lacking, and the darkness of the best-known tracks such as Hurt and The Day The World Went Away have emerged with a thread of understanding in bleaker times. One of the things that has always amazed me is that across the length of one album there can be incredible beauty, deep sadness and raw anger, with all of those moods somehow blended perfectly and seamlessly to create the whole. The Fragile remains one of the best albums ever to listen to in its entirety, truly taking you on a journey through a host of emotions.

It's also very notable that Trent Reznor, the band's creator, has always done things his own way, never compromising musically or creatively. That's taken in releasing full albums for free online, unexpectedly putting out acoustic or 'quiet' albums such as the brilliant Still and Ghosts I-IV, developing one of the most exciting live shows around – in fact their scintillating Woodstock performance was one of the things that brought the band too light for many people – and also developing a host of movie soundtracks, even landing an Oscar in the process. I've always said whether you like the band or not, it's hard not to give Reznor respect for his output and his approach to his music.


Every two weeks through 2019, I'll be joined by some of Ginger Nuts' regular contributors in celebrating three decades of incredible music from a band that has truly gone its own path and produced some of the best alternative music since its inception. We'll be kicking off in a fortnight's time with the debut album, Pretty Hate Machine, before working through the full NIN discography, as well as looking at some notable live shows and Trent Reznor side projects.

We hope you'll join us on the journey!