![]() ![]() But he will say that “The Wall,” Pink Floyd’s mainstream pillar of empathetic alienation, was the favorite album of his youth. ![]() He hesitates to talk about the records he enjoyed as a kid, stressing that his musical vocabulary was limited by his geographic circumstances. He didn’t discover anything remotely underground, he says, until he left small-town Mercer, Pa., to go to college and subsequently started making music in Cleveland. Reznor’s upbringing was pretty basic rural Americana-broken home, no major trauma, mall culture. A pleasant, if perhaps introverted nature seems to be his hallmark. He addresses questions having to do with responsibility and censorship issues with a lot more thoughtful conscientiousness and a lot less cheek than you might expect, seeming genuinely dismayed at the thought that his music might have a negative effect on anyone, and elated by the hope that it might provide the hopeless a healthy catharsis. He is recognizable as a normal guy straight outta Pennsylvania, his straight, dark hair now parted down the middle, only his jutting sideburns much suggesting a rocker-at-work, let alone a budding, brooding icon. In the hotel suite he’s calling home until he leaves for a yearlong tour-NIN’s first in three years-Reznor is hardly recognizable as the dreadlocked bard of bile seen in concerts past. And Nine Inch Nails’ macabre, sadomasochistic, apocalyptic videos have had the feel of snuff films (especially the infamous “Happiness in Slavery,” which graphically depicted machines inflicting genital torture and evisceration on a naked man). This is, after all, the musician who rented the house in the hills where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by the Manson Family, though he now regrets the notoriety that brought him. And, though it may not be the motivating force that drives him, he clearly has within him a love for shock appeal. This, in fact, may be the most shocking thing about him. I think I kick into self-destruction mode once in a while.” It was things that I’ve dealt with and still deal with at times. “And I address some ugly things and some desperate moments on the record, looking for consolation in perhaps the wrong things-through religion, through sex, through empowerment, through drugs. “I wanted to make a record that worked as a theme through the whole thing, one of self-examination and (self)-discovery and (self)-destruction at the same time, but what could end up being a healthy process, of shedding some blankets of blindness that you surround yourself with. “I was interested in exploring some more bleak terrain on this record,” says Reznor, 28, in what may qualify as the understatement of the year. So while there’s nothing resembling a possible hit single on the album, which Reznor tried to create without thinking about the pressure to produce an alternative blockbuster, the Zeitgeist could be just right to elevate NIN a few twists higher on the upward spiral of stardom anyway. 7 and one of its tracks won last year’s Grammy for best metal performance with vocal.Ĭlearly, Reznor’s confessionals have tapped a vein of youthful alienation that yearns for a more extreme expression than Nirvana’s more archly rendered Angst. Much to his amazement, it entered the Billboard charts at No. As exhilaratingly well-made as it is spiritually exhausting ( see review, ), its landing is likely to leave a major depression-no pun intended.Įver since Nine Inch Nails blew audiences away as the surprise hit of the 1991 “Lollapalooza” tour-suddenly quadrupling the sales of its 1989 debut, “Pretty Hate Machine,” well past the million mark-the stakes have been raised for whatever follow-up Reznor might design.Ī year and a half ago, to alleviate the pressure, he released a defiantly uncommercial mini-album, “Broken,” and didn’t do any touring to publicize it. “Spiral” arrives this week as one of the most anticipated albums of the year. Parts of “The Downward Spiral” are so intense they almost make that pathological photo atlas on Reznor’s coffee table look like a walk in the park.īut if it’s scary stuff, not everyone is frightened off. The descending arc of the new album runs from punkish broadsides against society, rage against religion and conformity, examinations of such escapist satisfactions as animalistic sex, into full-on, shockingly uncensored self-hatred-suicidal tendencies included. But in the studio, Reznor works primarily alone, creating highly computerized music so dark and so personal that it indeed comes to sound like the most secret innards of one man’s skull, scraped out, perhaps, with a blunt instrument. On the road, with a revolving lineup of musicians, Nine Inch Nails actually becomes the rock ‘n’ roll band its name would promise. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |