The Downward Spiral

iTunes Review

As if to underscore the sincerity of his taste for gothic atmosphere, Trent Reznor recorded NIN's second full album in a home studio that occupied the same L.A. hillside residence where the infamous Sharon Tate murders had been executed by the Manson family a quarter-century earlier. But there was considerably more to Reznor's music and persona here than such a hype-ready angle might indicate. Suffused with a palette of sonic textures and a dynamic range that were rare in industrial music, Reznor conjures one of the genre's touchstones here, a 1994 album that spawned the dark, sexually charged "Closer," which quickly became NIN's resilient breakthrough hit. The single "March of the Pigs" also underscores the unlikely pop sensibility that lurked beneath Reznor's patent sturm und drang, another key to his becoming one of the '90's most challenging rock icons.