Album Review: Magnetic Eye Records - Nine Inch Nails Redux
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Magnetic Eye Records is a label whose Redux series of releases take classic recordings and bring them in the new age through re-imagining the work via other artists. To date they’ve produced titles by Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Helmet under the Redux suffix, in which the likes of (the) Melvins, Pallbearer, Voivod, and more provide cover versions to recreate the album anew.
For their next two releases, Magnetic Eye turn their attention to Industrial legends, the genre-breaking Nine Inch Nails, with one title focusing on NIN’s seminal, era-defining 1994 The Downward Spiral, and a second, being a baker’s-dozen of the band’s better-known tunes.
The Downward Spiral Redux attempts to recapture lightning in a bottle by committing what some might describe as blasphemy. But this is not a catch-penny cash-in, or the impossible endeavour akin to remaking Jaws or Casablanca, rather a chance for fourteen disparate bands to acknowledge the influence Trent Reznor’s nihilistic masterpiece had on their development.
The highest profile band tackle the album’s most widely known track: the closing dirge of Hurt. Between the Buried and Me’s version of the denouement is part industrial and part gothic. Closer in intent to the record’s whispered, introspective confession than to Johnny Cash’s cover, it does free itself to soar in the chorus. Black Tusk’s Mr Self Destruct is pure extreme metal chaos; Daevar’s version of Closer crawls and oozes, maintaining the ethos of the track, yet putting their own spin on the song.
LA experimental electronica collective, Thief, turn Piggy into a futuristic warning; Sludgemeisters, Sandrider go all in on the bass-led frenzy of March of the Pigs; and Grin’s Heresy revolves around a hypnotic pulse and demonic whispered vocal.
High Tone Son of a Bitch approach Ruiner with sense of reverence, but still manage to drop in a few nu metal influences; Dreadnought’s The Becoming takes a more ambient direction, and John Fryer and Stella Soleli’s version of I Do Not Want This is perhaps the track of this redux album for me, as it doesn’t so much reinvent this particular wheel, as give it an alternate polish. The Nineties arrogance of Big Man with a Gun is reinterpreted by John Cxnner and Haxa into something of a more dance floor friendly piece, a track that would not have been amiss on one of NIN’s remix records.
If The Downward Spiral has any respite, it comes in the form of the instrumental A Warm Place, and Argentine post-rock IAH recreate that with a fragile melancholy; the fatalistic Eraser is so emotive that Abrams’ only option is to go full on with it; Author & Punisher’s version of Reptile is surprisingly faithful to the original, and psychedelic doomgaze band, Palehorse/ Palerider load the bottom end of the title track as the inevitability of what’s to come as Hurt draws into focus.
As mentioned earlier, trying to recreate The Downward Spiral is tantamount to blasphemy, but Magnetic Eye have assembled fourteen artists who treat the material with the necessary reverence and pay homage to one of the decades defining records. And if it sends you back to revisit the original, then listen to this in conjunction. For those interested, I found Adam Steiner’s 2020 book Into the Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of The Downward Spiral (Backbeat Books, Guilford, Connecticut) to be a very worthwhile read.
The second Nine Inch Nails Redux issue from Magnetic Eye to be released on the same day as The Downward Spiral’s Redux, is simply entitled The Best of Nine Inch Nails Redux and follows the same format as the previous titles in the redux range.
Taking a broader view of the band’s discography – though avoiding The Downward Spiral for obvious reasons – the set beings with progressive doomsters Snakemother lending their fuzzed up sludge to a portmanteau of The Fragile’s The Day the World Went Away, and Pretty Hate Machine’s Sin. The first half is haunting while Sin punches and scraps as though its life depended on it. Blue Heron’s version of Head Like a Hole reflects the band’s New Mexico origins, filled full of fuzzy bass and a laidback, desert groove. Finland’s Orbiter bring a huge, doomy vibe to Terrible Lie, and Colorado gothic dreamgaze sextet, Bleakheart manage to make Something I Could Never Have into a more morose and melancholic moment of heartbreak than even the original.
Blackened doom collective, Thou, offer a hellish version of Broken’s cover of Pigface’s Suck, with the occasional Marilyn Manson reference heard. Unattached to a NIN album is The Perfect Drug, taken from the soundtrack of David Lynch’s 1997 Lost Highway, here given an edgy punk feel by experimental art rockers, Nonexistent Night.
The jury is still out as to which Nine Inch Nails’ album - The Downward Spiral or The Fragile - is actually their magnum opus. I’m a Downward Spiral kinda cat myself, but for those with Fragile leanings, you can see what German post metal collective, The Ocean, make of Even Deeper; they maintain the skipping beats and ascending vocals, adding their own accoutrements, fleshing out the musically sparse moments. Indie folk singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler gives The Great Below an ethereal quality with the addition of eastern instrumentation.
A six-year gap between records ended with Nine Inch Nails’ most commercial release, With Teeth, in 2005, here represented by three tracks. Post metal Swedes, The Moth Gatherer hit big and heavy with their uncompromising version of The Hand That Feeds, rejecting the original’s catchy progression in favour of an ominously slow and oozing delivery. Californian power trio, Grayceon, is the perfect fit for Right Where It Belongs’s slow build; going in the same direction as The Moth Gatherer, drone outfit, Chrome Ghost interpret Every Day is Exactly the Same with the right amount of existential angst.
Surprisingly material from both Year Zero and Hesitation Marks is overlooked, having us jump to the Add Violence EP in 2017 and Evi Vine’s cover of This Isn’t the Place, allowing the London-based singer-songwriter to flexi her darkly ambient creative muscles. The Bad Witch album from 2018 brings us up to date as experimental psychedelic doom band, Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree’s version of Over & Out is nearly ten-minutes of immersive musical hypnotism.
Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails are now woven into the fabric of music and to hear twenty-seven bands across two releases, paying due homage to his influences make for a satisfying listening experience. It also serves as a reminder that before Mr Reznor won Oscars for soundtracks he was responsible for some of the Nineties most confrontational music.
I also enjoyed discovering a host of new bands that have now found themselves on my ‘Must check out’ list; win-win for both of these Magnetic Eye releases.
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