Before Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor did upstanding things like marry, procreate, get ripped, and win an Academy Award, he made one of the most upsetting, misunderstood, and enduring album of the ‘90s, “The Downward Spiral,” which turns 20 on March 8.
With bleak cover art based on a painting called “Wound,” and songs about nihilism and self-abuse, “Spiral” was never an obvious contender for 50 Cent mashups and MTV omnipresence. But it nonetheless made Reznor - who at the time of its recording was reportedly in the depths of drug addiction – the decade’s antihero poster-boy, even landing him on Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential People” list in 1997.
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