It’s 1115A. I arrived at work at 845A. On the way in, I heard that Nine Inch Nails was re-releasing The Downward Spiral in November. So I figured I haven’t been to the NIN site (www.nin.com) in sometime, I better check it out. Well, they redesigned it, and that’s what I’ve been doing for two hours.

Good news, they are releasing closure on DVD (currently only available on VHS). If you don’t know what closure is, it’s the Nine Inch Nails videos from the first two albums. It includes some cool videos from the broken and fixed albums as well as a snuff film. Good Stuff.

Here are some details for The Downward Spiral

So what does Nine Inch Nails mean to me? Well, in high school, it was my primary album of choice. I started with, broken, their second album. I couldn�t escape the awesome layering of sound and the crushing drum and base. I had never heard anything like it before. It was the cock that broke my sonic cherry. I was changed. I bought Pretty Hate Machine and started listening to Tori Amos, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and REM. A huge departure from the pop metal (Pirate Radio) and hip-hop (Power 106) I was used to.

That was nineteen ninety, my sophomore year at Damien High School. I had just started hanging with the Via Verde crowd. They introduced me to other sonic gems, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and The Smiths (with and without Morrissey). I started reading NIN influences, different schools of thought, and questioning all the things that people told me was right and wrong (typical high school stuff).

When I was in Dubuque, IA, The Downward Spiral was released. In my opinion, it�s one of the most sonically complex and harmonious albums since Dark Side of the Moon. I bought it on CD and cassette. After Iowa, I moved to Arizona for the summer where I sold study guides and cookbooks door-to-door. It was great. I was working and in a bigger city where there was nightlife (not Iowa). When the summer was over, I moved back home to La Verne, dropped out of Dubuque, and started the hopscotch game of completing college. I listened to Broken or the downward spiral between classes at least once a day.