This is the aftermath of the defiance that Reznor so brilliantly articulates throughout the album. In this sense, they feel like artefacts remnants of a close, but ugly past. They are stark, confronting, raw symbolically allusionary, they hint at the carnage that has come before. Now, when looking at the works that Mills produced for the album, there is a feeling of utter annihilation. He describes, in an article he wrote for Self-titled mag, that first conference call with Reznor and his then management as surreal from rural england, in the shadow of Shakespeare, to American rockstars and serious conference calls. In 1994, when Trent Reznor, frontman for NIN, contacted British painter, designer and collagist, Russel Mills, commissioning him to produce a world of works (25 in total) for The Downward Spiral, he asked Russel to keep a few words in mind- ‘attrition’, ‘wound’ and ‘decay’.Īt the time Mills was in the middle of working on a year-long commission, producing all of the print campaign material for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Unlike its cover art and slip-case (‘The Downward Spiral’ and ‘Wound’ respectively) the album’s power is not in its subtly. In all senses it is a cathartic explosion that rallies against the American mainstream, the superficiality of modern consumerism and the crippling isolation of the culturally disenfranchised.
The psychological duality of helplessness and defiance vulnerability and bitterness misery and rage. Nine Inch Nails’ magnum opus, The Downward spiral, is a bleak, visceral and harrowing concept album that explores some of the darkest points of human experience.Holding no punches, it is an industrial, nail-biting, jaw dropping, nut-crunching exploration into humankind’s eternal conflicts. Holding no punches, it is an industrial, nail-biting, jaw dropping, nut-crunching exploration into humankind’s eternal conflicts. When not saving lives he sits dreaming about all the books he will never write. Nine Inch Nails’ magnum opus, The Downward spiral, is a bleak, visceral and harrowing concept album that explores some of the darkest points of human experience. Adam Steiner is a lifeguard, journalist and author.
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