Albums In The Day: The Records Of My Life - Pt. 5

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral (1994)

Going into my freshmen year of high school, there were two tracks bouncing around with some regularity on the radio that everyone around me were spooging their shorts over: "What's The Frequency Kenneth?" by R.E.M., and "Piggy" by Nine Inch Nails. Now, the R.E.M. didn't do much for me at the time, but I hadn't really heard "Piggy" yet. In fact, I had never really heard Nine Inch Nails until I had heard The Crow soundtrack (lame, yes), so anything else by them was alien to me. Eventually Christmas rolled around, my Ma asked me what I wanted for presents, so I asked for NIN's The Downward Spiral and Nirvana's Unplugged In New York. That proved to be quite the haul... Keep in mind that the Christmas of 1994 was the first after my parents' divorce, so take one part teenage angst, mix with the "fun" of divorce (and all that goes with it), now dump 14 tracks of a raging Trent Reznor to it, mix well. Good thing I had the Nirvana to calm me down, but then my high school classmate Zeke pointed me towards NIN's Broken EP, which is a story for another time...

Give It A Try:
"Mr. Self Destruct"
"Piggy"
"March Of The Pigs"
"Closer"
"Hurt"