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Review Of The Downward Spiral

By Tom Sinclair for Entertainment Weekly on March 1, 1994

NINE INCH NAILS The Downward Spiral (Nothing/TVT/Interscope) On its second full-length album, Nine Inch Nails (a.k.a Trent Reznor, the studio Svengali responsible for NIN's mix of twisted techno and impure industrial rock) advances further along the path of radio-friendly aural terrorism. Reznor's pet topics (sex, power, S&M, hatred, transcendence) are all here, wrapped in hooks that hit your psyche with the force of a blow-torch. Definitive: the phallus-as-firearm imagery of "Big Man With a Gun."

Transcribed by Keith Duemling

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