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Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
FoolFantastic (16)
PunishedJeezy (22)
Jesse_Custer (24)
MaxGalactica (26)
Sheep007 (32)
hotdogturtle (34)
Seanchan (34)
Fluttershy_Pony (36)
rwlh (36)
RyoCaliente (42)
plasmabeam (54)
Johnbobb (58)
MarkS2222222222 (66)
HBJDubs (70)

General Album Comments

Johnbobb: One of my favorite albums, excited to listen again as if I don't already pretty regularly

FoolFantastic: The major achievement of The Downward Spiral is taking one of the most intentionally cold styles of popular music and drawing raw emotion from it. It is exactly what it says on the tin, a downward spiral into growing self-loathing. Trent Reznor found human meaning in mechanical sound. It might not be a traditionally 'pleasant' experience, but it's certainly one of the most successful concept albums out there. "Closer" remains one of the most terrifying songs ever written, a total breaking point disguised as animalistic lust. "Hurt" gets unfairly overshadowed by Johnny Cash's cover - while I agree Cash's version is better, part of that is how he recontextualizes an already powerful song. The way that final line of hope is almost completely silenced by the music always gets to me. The perfect closer to a phenomenal album.

Seanchan: As usual, yes, this was really a first listen, other than Closer and Hurt. I guess I didn't get it? I didn't necessarily expect to, based on my usual listening tastes and not being particularly high on Pretty Hate Machine. But I know this is an album held in high regard.

Maybe that partly comes down to a bad listening environment? I was in my car and I found the mix, especially the first few songs, to be not good, though maybe it was done on purpose? The lyrics were very low and completely overwhelmed by the instrumentation.

Johnbobb: I think this is honestly a top 10 album for me

Sheep007: Took me a few songs to get into this, but this is a really strong concept album. Closer in particular is absolutely phenomenal. The whole thing is almost a little too intense, a little too focused on a glob of thoroughly negative feeling for me to enjoy it as much as I might other albums. That said, I don't have to want to listen on repeat to recognise how good it is.

MaxGalactica: Incredible album. The synth production in particular feels way ahead of its time. I love how brutally aggressive Trent Reznor's vocals and the instrumentals are. The bottom three in my ranking (The Downward Spiral, A Warm Place, and Big Man With a Gun) are the only tracks I think aren't stellar. Very glad we got to cover this.

Also worth mentioning that this album coming up is what finally motivated me to start going through the rest of NIN's discography, since this album was the only one I was already familiar with. I still have 6 albums left to go through, but The Fragile in particular was awesome. Pretty Hate Machine was good for the most part, but felt pretty raw and a lot less developed than Trent's future projects.

rwlh: An interesting album. It took a second listen for it to click. Hurt is a curious song. I didn't enjoy it (not because of the challenging subject matter, it just didn't click with me as a song), but it was still compelling.

Seanchan: I'm very conflicted about how I feel about this one. I did another listen to Pretty Hate Machine to compare and that one has got a few more songs that I enjoyed but it doesn't feel as cohesive. Like Sheep007, I found The Downward Spiral to be a lot to take in; it's a harsh and at points overwhelming album. On my 2nd listen it was such a relief to get to A Warm Place because of the songs preceding it, which is likely exactly the point.

My other odd thought was that I was reminded of Slipknot in just the general soundscape and intensity of the music and emotions. As I've said multiple times in the past though, I'm just not at a point in my life now where I want to hear and revel in brooding, depressing, angry music. It makes it hard to judge because there's the opposing thoughts in my head of "this is probably good and effective at what it's trying to do" and "this is just not for me".

HBJDubs: Incredible album. A ton of these songs get shuffled around with each listen, but the top 3 are set in stone. Eraser in particular is so anxiety-inducing, there's nothing quite like it for me

MarkS2222222222: Lot more ******* and dick stuff than I expect.

Overall this is kind of like Requiem for a Dream (which is also a downward spiral) in that it's "good", but once is enough.

Hurt is still great. Maybe a few others are good stand alone, but most are really only interesting within the concept album. I actually like Closer a lot more now that I get it in the context of the descent