The Downward Spiral is one of the first concept albums that fall under the broad category of "some dude losing his mind" that defined the genre. And for good reason, this album is fucking brutal! Distorted guitar chords, crazed drumming, blaring synths and screaming vocals. This album can be a tiring and difficult listen for someone unfimiliar with the genre. I remember being in high school and wanting to listen to the album that the band's biggest single, closer, came from, a 6 minute industrial dance track about well wanting to "fuck you like an animal." So of course you can imagine my whiplash hearing the rest of the hardcore album. Well then, why do I pick this industrial rock classic as a starting point for modern rock despite me considering it such a hard listen? Well it's because I love it! Trent Reznor's lyricism on this album quite literally details a man on a downward spiral. He's basically saying "POV: you're so obsessed with sex and drugs that you're destroying your own life, and at the end of it all, all you are is suicidal." But he does so in a manner that does not glorify it, it feels as though it's a cry for help. The whiplash between the albums blaring noise rock, and it's calmer more introspective lyrics shows just how exhausting the lifestyle he depicts in this album really is. Overall I picked it because I think it shows there's a lot of interesting aspects of rock music being explored, and I think this album does a good job exploring many of these
This is an interesting one, because this album can be quite devicive. If you enjoyed it's narrative structure, I'd reccomend checkng out Mastadon's Crack the Sky, which is a similarly haunting and brutal album who's concept I won't spoin :). If you liked the haunting noise I recommend checking out Daughter's album You Won't Get What You Want, which I think is almost more brutal than The Downward Spiral and equally fanctastic, which I really hate to admit because the lead singer is a known abuser- so make sure to turn on ad-block! If this wasn't your thing I completely get it and would instead point you to one last album, Black Country, New Roads Ants From Up There