»3rd June 2005

Music Review: Nine Inch Nails - Further Down The Spiral



It's been a while since I reviewed anything on the b-log, so it seemed like no better time than to review something else. This time I thought it'd be different, maybe even interesting, to review some music. Well, no better place to start than with the best band in the world, the best remix album in the world and the best album which I own twice in identical forms. Easiest to start with the last statement, I own this twice not because I bought it again to prove how much I love it but because of some erroneous present. Hey, I'm not complaining though. Preamble over, onto the actual album now.
The Downward Spiral is really cool, I listen to it a lot, Further Down The Spiral is the remix album. I like remix albums, hearing something I like again, but in a slightly or very different form isn't a bad idea, which is why I like the Down In It single (note for the unsure; if I reference an album or single, it's probably by NIN (that's Nine Inch Nails) unless otherwise specified). I first heard FDTS without hearing The Downward Spiral (TDS, acronyms make my life easier), I was quite confused and thought 'what the fuck is this noise?'. Not knowing it was a remix album I thought it was just some arty concept album. That seems irelevant to the review, the point is that this remix album can function as a standalone album. Like the set items on Diablo 2, FDTS is strong on it's own, but becomes a whole new powerful demon-slaying tool when combined with its parent The Downward Spiral. I mean when you listen to these sequentially, TDS first of course, it really does turn the whole thing into a Fragile-esque, two disc noise-opera. I'm somewhat ashamed of that last sentence, but it's difficult getting these feelings across. Now that I've hopefully got you on track with the idea that a really good remix album is also a really good album on its own, I'll plunge straight into a track-by-track word campaign.
I live in the UK, which is in Heckmondwike, so I'm listening to Halo Ten v2, which in my opinion is a better album than the North American version thanks to the absence of some remixes and the appearance of some others. That's not to say I'm not at some point going to indulge my completist side and order the North American version (and the Japanese version) as well.

The Tracks

1. Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)
This track kicks off like some warped Piggy from TDS before launching into some rip-roaring wurlitzer sounding line. Well after this, Trent's whispering continues but a bad-ass Perfect Drug-esque (there I go using that suffix again) drum and bass beat and distorto guitar kicks in. That noise-hadouken was the chorus. The verses let up a little with the wurlitzer and a funky drum beat that wouldn't sound out of place in the opening titles to a cricket programme (seeing as we're talking about NIN here, that would be a good thing to hear them opening a cricket programme). This Piggy remix ably opens the album, it's bright, refreshing and heavy, but that's not to say it's lumbering, this tune is quite the twinkle-toes when you hear what the cymbal gets up to. I really like this song, it takes Piggy to new, brilliant places.

2. The Art of Self Destruction, part one.

Okay, here is the first of the three Mr. Self Destruct remixes present. This one is the low-key one. It starts off fairly laid-back, some of the sounds from the end of the original appear to be present. Trent is still whispering the lyrics to us, the drum beat has gone all filtered and electro sounding. Bass lines are substituted for hydraulic thumps. What constitutes a whining lead guitar sounds more like a 56K. These are all good things, NIN could make a washing machine sound cool if they, or rather Trent, wanted to. The calm, or rather foreboding, start grows into a noisy drum-fuelled mess, which the whining lead struggles to penetrate. Hey! That's the drum beat from the end of the original song! That guitar part from the original appears to be hitting different chords! I actually think we are getting some of that 'extending and re-working songs' stuff which Trent mumbles about when asked about remixes on the myriad of 'insightful' interview discs. This song isn't as good as the first track, it's not really great as a standalone. Just think of it as part one, literally, of what is coming up next. Good track though, I mean this is a good album after all, and we don't want second tracks letting you down.

3. Self Destruction, part three.

Woah, straight in with the Mr. Self Destruct chorus, Trent starts off mumbling but soon lets loose with some good ol' shouting. Yeah, this song is quite fast, the guitar riffs in the verses are like chainsaws. The whining lead has been exchanged for a whining feedback-type noise. Boom! That's what this song is like. Ah but soon enough the pace is let up and we have some of that whispering lyrics that were barely audible in the original song along with some heavily distorted and effects driven drum beats. That's a quiet intermission to the rest of us. This is soon overtaken by another driving verse. Yeah this actually sounds like the original a little. As we approach the end of the song, the noise gets piled on and things start getting all mushed up and angsty. Yeah this is good. 5/5.

4. Heresy (version)

The first obvious remix. Definitely less ambitious than the previous three tracks, what's amazing is that we're a third of the way through the album at the beginning of this track and it feels as though the opening overture is over and we're into the album proper. Did I say noise-opera before? From the original Heresy, the most obvious survivor to this album is the guitar part, now sporting less filters but just as much distortion, along the the cool falsetto vocal part. We got some trademark NIN screams or growls or whatever they are through what constitutes as a bridge or an instrumental intermission or something. This is a really cool remix, the keyboard part gives the song a completely different sound to NIN, well a fairly different sound anyway. This song sounds somewhat like a slowed down and less noisy NWO-era Ministry. Lot's of TV/film style samples. That drum beat... ooh that's funky. This song doesn't really creep much out of a mid-tempo groove, which makes a nice contrast to the 160bpm of the last song. Again, towards the end of the song a cacophony of noise, distorted guitars and voice samples take over. Then it just stops!

5. The Downward Spiral (the bottom)

That abrupt end leads into the most difficult to digest track on the album. I never really liked this at first. I never really liked the original title song to be honest. That changed though, so now I'm going to explain why I DO like this song. The beginning has the filtered talking, Trent's whispering and odd electronic bleeps. Then we have what can only be described as a wind-up Trent Scream. Which then leads us into the electronica keyboard body of the song. There's no discernable drum-machine beat thumping through this section, there's the odd tom riff/collapse (which is again, heavily noised-up by the Reznor), but that's it drum-wise. What we have instead is some very selective samples from the original song laced into this meandering electronic soundscape. This immensely enjoyable middle section is brought to a close by some eerie, delay-effect-abusing, accoustic guitar stacato chords. I'm sure they popped up on the original song. Again, Trent resumes the barrage with some absolutely huge noise-booms (seriously have you ever tried explaining these crazy sounds?). Then we all fade out and are left with with the same barely audible guitar part and some 'NIN-wind' (the stuff you hear at the beginning of Hurt).

6. Hurt (Live).

Did I just say Hurt? Well here it is, this is the perfect song to follow the Downward Spiral. I'm not going to bore you explaining what happens in Hurt so I'll just say this. This song works, it's just a straight-up live version of Hurt, quite nicely performed. Virtually all the parts from the TDS original are present, plus you get the crowds whistles and howls along with the rather isolating natural reverb of the evidently quite large venue. If you like Hurt, then you'll like this. I personally think NIN's version of Hurt is superior to the Johnny Cash version. That's not to say the Cash version was a bad song, NIN's version just seems to fit better into the context of the rest of the album, plus I don't think Johnny Cash's voice was really suited to this sort of ballad. I mean you can only take so much of him sounding out-of-breath and tired. The Cash version is moving, but I'm not sure that's entirely because of the music or the voice, I mean would you think the song was SO good if you hadn't seen the rather humbling video?

7. At The Heart Of It All

Following the anthem of United States of Angst we have the Aphex Twin remix of erm... something. I have no fucking idea if this is a remix of something or whether it's an original creation. Whatever the hell it is, it sounds like some bad-ass score to a film like Blade Runner. This song is probably what most people would describe as 'Industrial'. I don't mean it sounds like Ministry or Skinny Puppy, it literally sounds like a factory. I'm not going to rant about what a silly label 'Industrial' is. The 'drum beat' on this song is comprised of thuds, anvils and whirs. There's a soaring 'brass' part which sounds like Vangelis crossed with Gary Numan. I like this song a lot. It's got a real cold, isolated feel to it and is really making me think I should actually buy an Aphex Twin album.

8. Ruiner (version)

Here we have the second remix not on the American version (the first being track 3). It's low-key and it's pretty funky. We have a return of the mid-tempo electronic groove. There's some nice echoey electronic bleeps, some nice vocal samples from the original song, and that same keyboard sound you were hearing in track 5. I'm a little biased on this song as I seriously like the original. Thankfully, this isn't just a re-treading of the original song. This song is most directly comparable to the Heresy remix, though in this case distorted guitar riffs are exchanged for sweeping keyboard parts and a beat which sounds like it's straight off the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack. The chorus is a joy to behold as well, gone is the groovy beat, in comes in the NIN toms, and some angsty shouting. We even have a seriously cool guitar sample too. You can actually sing along with this remix, which is something most remixes don't achieve. To be fair, you can do that with most of the remixes on this album, those with lyrics anyway. Another solid track which leads onto the final act of the album.

9. Eraser (denial; realisation)

Amazing that the first use of the semicolon in a title name of a remix album came on the penultimate track. This track is awesome. The original eraser was primarily a drum track. This one is a guitar track. One guitar powerchord for nearly seven minutes, punctuated by a very Ministry-sounding drum-machine beat and the odd NIN scream and heavily distorted sample of 'Kill me'. What sounds like a simple, perhaps even repetitive song opens itself up to reveal another complex and layered remix. Those electronic bleeps are back, so are the sweeping keyboard parts. I almost like this more than the original, which is a top dollar NIN song in its own right. The intermission breaks off the guitar for a while and lets the bleeps and whirs fly. Then, shock, horror! The chainsaw guitar riff returns, but it's playing A DIFFERENT CHORD. It's a seriously good riff though, nothing like some palm muting chords. What's kind of strange is that the distorted 'kill me' samples sometimes sound more like 'help me'. Now that's cool.

10. Self Destruction, final.

The album closes with nearly ten minutes of Mr. Self Destruct. This final remix (hey it even says it in the title), takes parts 1, 2 (on the US, not the UK version, and WAY too similar to final) and 3 and really brings them to a conclusion. The opening section leads into the main section with one super cool distortion/noise-solo line. The drum beat is slightly modified from previously remixes. That long suffering whining guitar is back and is now nearly unrecognisable in it's super electronified form. At around 3:20 we have another stop, another start, a new drum beat and some fairly unadulterated vocals. If you don't know the lyrics to Mr. Self Destruct by this point there really is something wrong with you. The song alternates between mid-tempo drum-machinery and super-fast, super-loud, super-distorted angst. There's even a little sample of a string part from the intermission which sounds all echoey and weird and even a David Bowie sample ("-falls wanking to the floor..."). Yep, this song is really up to something. Bits of it sound like part three, other bits like part two. This is why I believe the UK version to be superior to the US version. Part two was around 7 minutes long and for the most part indistinguishable from the final mix. Part three only clocks in at 3:28 and so in the UK version Trent is making and not labouring a point.

So, the album is over, you know the lyrics to Mr. Self Destruct backwards. You probably want an Aphex Twin album. I don't know how clear I made it over the course of the track-by-track reasonably detailed review, but this album is good. 'It's been the shit since 1995, it's still the shit ten years on and it's going to keep being the shit for a very long time' as a Slayer fan might put it. Anyway, enough NIN cock-riding, let's get this over with, give the album full points and bring this bloated blog entry to a close.

5/5


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!