Some bands or artists are impossible to talk about objectively. Nine Inch Nails is that way for me. Although my bio correctly pegs me as a rap geek, and that’s largely what I cover for this website, NIN has been a part of my musical lexicon since I was 13. It’s 12 years later and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.
The appeal of music for me has been largely centered around a need for catharsis. I think that’s true of most people to varying degrees. I can certainly say of myself that it’s almost too true at the risk of highlighting a less-than-enviable personal fact. So, it’s natural that I remain interested in NIN after all these years. (This is also why most Nine Inch Nails fans are my age and above. Trent Reznor hasn’t been interested in courting the current mall goth/mall hipster generation for many years. The former mall goths are a different story.)
Everyone has felt the feelings expressed in NIN songs, as intense and aggressive as they can be. Everyone has been angry at institutions the way he is in “Head Like a Hole,” “Heresy,” or “God Given.” Everyone has been unable to reasonably compartmentalize love and lust as chronicled in “Closer.” Everyone has felt unraveled and broken and torn in the manner of songs like “Gave Up,” “1,000,000,” “The Big Come Down,” and of course “Hurt” – perhaps the ultimate sad song of the past quarter-century. Some of us can express these sentiments with greater articulation and prettier language than what is contained in Reznor’s lyrics. Others can’t progress beyond inarticulate shouts (Imagine the last-resort shout of “big time hard line bad luck FIST FUCK” from the song “Wish” reduced to a bellow of the last two words. Or, you know, Korn and any other nu-metal/mook-rock band.) But, we all understand them. Melodramatic and arguably overwrought though it might be, the second verse of “1,000,000” is something that anyone who’s ever felt inextricably tethered to their negative feelings can understand:
“I wake up, on the floor,
Start it up again, like it matters anymore.
I don’t know, if it does,
Is this really all that there ever was?
Put the gun, to my mouth,
Close your eyes, blow my fucking brains out.
Pretty patterns, on the floor,
That’s enough for them, but I still need more, more, more.”
I’d say that few bands aside from perhaps Nirvana and The Afghan Whigs have effectively mastered the art of cathartic sound as NIN has. Reznor took the soft-loud template of the Pixies and Nirvana and ran with it like no one before or since. The ingredients – post-punk distorted guitar, synth and piano lines that veer from mournful and plaintive to excruciatingly abrasive on hairpin turns, samples, ambient noise, surprisingly rhythmic basslines, a well-balanced mix of beats and live drums, Reznor’s perfectly pitched and always melodic voice, even in the midst of screams – come together in a perfect storm that will toss you across the fucking room and then help you mend your bruises. Consider the six-track cycle that concludes The Downward Spiral. “Big Man With a Gun, “A Warm Place,” “Eraser,” “Reptile,” the title track and “Hurt.” This takes you from one of NIN’s most vulgar, brutal songs to an instrumental so calming it could pass for an Enya backing track. Then, you’re taken through three devastating soft-loud ragers. It climaxes in the suicide narrative of “The Downward Spiral” and resolves with “Hurt,” a song that is more about a wish for a do-over of life than its surface subject matter of drug addiction – something Reznor kicked along with booze between 2001 and 2005.
This is emotionally draining for anyone who listens with even a hint of anger or sadness (and may lead to crying jags), but I’d be surprised if on some level you didn’t feel better afterwards. I’d say the same of the song trio that ends With Teeth, which is uneven but great in portions like “The Line Begins to Blur,” “Beside You in Time” and “Right Where it Belongs.” The last of those is a song that successfully walks a tightrope between despair and hope.
The demons left by those dependencies and Reznor’s openly admitted social anxiety disorder clearly haven’t left him completely (the aforementioned “1,000,000” is from 2008’s The Slip). But he’s also been able to channel this cathartic expression into other directions. The most obvious is the dystopian politically-motivated fury of Year Zero, but also the abstraction of the Ghosts instrumentals and the scores for David Fincher’s The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Even those soundtracks boast the same emotional underpinnings while still sounding fresh. Look at what he (and collaborator Atticus Ross) manage to do with barely half a dozen fucking notes and some machine noises on “Hand Covers Bruise” from Social Network. That song is heartbreaking. So are tracks like “Hidden in Snow” and the percussive nightmare of “Oraculum,” from Dragon Tattoo.
When Trent announced to the world that NIN would be touring again this year (something that he said would never happen again back in 2009), you can imagine my insane level of excitement. I’m fortunate enough to have seen them live before, on what many fans would call the best tour (Lights in the Sky 2008), but going that once simply isn’t enough. I knew every word to almost every song and lost my voice singing, screaming and (in the case of “Hurt”) crying them out with a Bic lighter overheating in my hand and slightly burning my thumb. In a live sitting, NIN becomes bigger, more raw, more immediate and so much more affecting. Seeing them live also includes waaaaaay more pretty-ass lights. You can make a solid argument for them as one of the best touring bands maybe ever.
Someday, I may grow up to the point where I’m filled by Reznor-esque feelings on an extremely infrequent basis. I aspire to that, honestly. Even if I realize that personal growth, I don’t see myself leaving NIN behind. I’ll always need to be reassured that one of the most accomplished musical acts from the past 30 years knows exactly what it feels like in those moments where no light shines in and you need that release more than anything.
Liam Green can be reached at lgreen@thoughtpollution.com.