Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral

NIN is one of my overall favorite bands/acts. I may be biased because I do think Trent Reznor is interesting, but, if you're an avid fan of NIN, this book is for you.

Absolutely loved this book. The downward spiral will always have a special spot in my heart and this book took me back to the early/mid nineties. I’ve read a lot of so so books on nin, but this one blew them all away. Loved how it quoted so many interviews from the time. If you’re a nine inch nails fan just buy it, you won’t be disappointed.

This was a great casual and informative read into the mind of Trent during this period of time!

I learned of the book because of the Nailed podcast and read it in conjunction with the album’s 30th anniversary. Really appreciated the in-depth research and alternating chapters between the songs and various relevant topics. If this sounds like something you might be into, you’ll definitely dig it.

An emotionally exhilarating and exhausting high protein account of the history, cultural impact, and purposes The Downward Spiral serve.“Almost in spite of itself, it has become, for many, that rare thing—the album that saved your life.”Steiner’s opening of “Into the Never” cuts as quick to the point as the reason you’re putting “The Downward Spiral” on the turntable for the however-hundredth time. Even if it is not this particular second, you remember the time you played the record that changed everything. Or, you remember the time one particular song drifted you in a little deeper, so you went back to listen to the whole thing over again. You remember this as you remember the time it broke through as urgent and confused as you were. Or, are.In it, Steiner offers a glimpse into the wider world of what birthed and was influenced by The Downward Spiral, much in the same way “Roger Waters The Man Behind The Wall” by Dave Thompson does. It meticulously scours old articles, video interviews, and comparative historical events and philosophy (complete with a subtle Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” reference) to bring a relevant reading of the album to us.Yet, that is just the journalistic structure of the book. Where Steiner shines is his ability to take an album that bleeds over from song to song in a waking nightmare and deconstruct what is already a piece about deconstruction. And, beyond clinically taking the album song by song and offering their recipes the book cracks with Steiner’s editorializations (which he gives disclaimer to at the top). The process of ingesting the book on those grounds makes it a journey for the reader to engage with Steiner’s stances, and in so doing opens where the reader meets the emotions of the album’s title character as Steiner interprets them. Which he does as vulnerably as any one who is a deep cuts fan would. It’s as if Steiner has slipped in his emotional journey with The Downward Spiral inside the professional journalistic account of the album’s gestation, and it makes the attachment to the original material all the more profound. It offers room for catharsis, commiseration, and community amongst fellow Nine Inch Nails obsessives without ever turning into a memoir about what The Downward Spiral means for Steiner. We never get the story (emotional state, circumstances, gut response) of his first time hearing the record save for the description of each song in their respective chapter, but it will make you even more grateful for the first time you listened to it.The book achieves its confluence partially because you get to observe from a distance the chaotic factors that let The Downward Spiral exist in the first place. Beyond Trent Reznor’s mental health come an intersectional conflict with the recording industry’s practices, toxic masculinity, the hollowness of celebrity, and how The Downward Spiral has been used as a means for upliftment and a harmful weapon. Only sometimes with mutual exclusivity.This book is a meditation upon why we keep returning to the album as much as it is a means to say “Thanks” to Trent Reznor for giving it to us in the first place. It is by a fan, it is for the fans. And, it is for the fans without "Star-F***ing" fueling the fire.You’ve already entered the spiral. The only way to why and out is through.

Adam Steiner's book takes Nine Inch Nails' most accomplished album as a starting point, veering off in various directions from each song's conceptual underpinnings to explore their significance in a broader societal context. Peppered throughout are various factoids that your average hardcore NIN listener may or may not know...I know I picked up a few details. A must-have for any completionists that collected all the Halos back in the day!

I admit I know little of this album or Nine Inch Nails, but read it to interview the author for a podcast . I found it a very dark, difficult album and outside of what I usually listen to. The book is equally dark and dense, and a very informative read. Steiner breaks down all parts of the album and digs into NIN and Trent Reznor in a fascinating way. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and think fans of the album and NIN should not miss this one!

Adam Steiner’s ‘Into The Never’ offers readers an in-depth, track-by-track overview of the seminal Nine Inch Nails release, ‘The Downward Spiral.’Regardless of where ‘Downward Spiral’ sits within your personal rankings—I’d start my list with its follow-up, ‘The Fragile’—the cultural impact of the 1994 release is undeniable. But it’s nearly impossible to tell the story of this massive album without diving deep into the headspace of one Trent Reznor. To that end, Steiner tethers a vivid narrative surrounding Reznor’s writing and recording to his in-depth analysis of the record.Over nearly three-hundred pages, Steiner recounts a treasure-trove of fascinating anecdotes and personal insights about the man (and his band) behind the record as well as the circumstances surrounding its creation. Dissecting the record song by song, the London-based author offers thoughts and insights on everything from the lyrical and musical components to how each song fits within the context of the greater album.Steiner is clearly a skilled writer, but I couldn’t help but appreciate the level of personal investment with which he approached this project. Sure, ‘Into The Never’ chronicles one of the nineties’ biggest records, but Steiner’s take is anything but clinical. That being said, the author wisely rounds out his personal thoughts with a myriad of quotes, many from Reznor himself, infusing this text with objective credibility that might otherwise be lacking.Additionally, there’s a ton of analysis focusing on the pop-culture landscape circa the mid-nineties—this is a crucial component of truly understanding the value and impact of what many consider to be Reznor’s masterpiece.Obviously, Steiner writes from a fan’s perspective, but having experienced ‘The Downward Spiral’s massive popularity first-hand is hardly a prerequisite for enjoying this book. In fact, it could be argued that it's the uninitiated who stand to gain the most from ‘Through The Never.’While you only get one chance to hear a record ‘for the first time,’ Adam Steiner’s ‘Into The Never’ offers fans young and old a whole new way to experience ‘The Downward Spiral’—highly recommended.

Words

This is, quite frankly, a superb and brilliantly constructed biography of one of my all-time favourite albums, NIN's 'The Downward Spiral'.Superbly written, this is at all times presents astute, insightful analysis examining the recording process, biographical events, socio-political contexts and philosophical and psychoanalytical theory. Other cultural texts and artefacts are likewise explored and connections effortless drawn with the album. There’s a brilliant comparative analysis, for example, of Manic Street Preachers’s ‘The Holy Bible’ (another favourite album of mine) and ‘Spiral’ at one point, simultaneously examining the artistic modus operandi of both Reznor and Edwards and the thematic and lyrical content of both outputs.There are some superb nuggets of information in there, too (I particularly found fascinating the identification of the various movie samples that were used on the album), and I found myself reaching for the album and listening to each track, in a different way, as they were discussed in the book.It seemed fitting, too, that one of the longest sections of analysis was concerning the shortest song on the album, ‘Big Man With a Gun’, but the discussions of toxic masculinity and gun violence (without treading old ground with regard to these debates) really shone a new light on a track that can sometimes seem a little crass and too ‘obvious’.The book concludes, artfully, with a retrospective of Reznor’s soundtrack work and later albums, but never losing sight of the main subject matter, ‘Spiral’, carefully examining the personal and artistic journey that led from this brutal, devastating and ground-breaking album of 1994 to the Oscar-winning creator of movie soundtracks.Overall, I gobbled this up and I know it will be a book that will end up well-thumbed and dog-eared as I continue in the future to dip into it and refresh myself with its on-point analysis.

A deep and in-depth yet still easy page-turner look at one of the defining albums of the 1990's and artist's in history. The author covers everything from an insightful pre-TDS history of NIN before getting to the album itself. We get a chapter for each song and much more including the recording process, the art-work for the album, it's video's etc. Adam is a long-time and avid fan but this doesn't stop him being objective in his writing which is to be both welcomed and appreciated. He also does a great job in referencing artist's and theme's that influenced Reznor and vice-versa along with those who are correlational from that moment in time. Charles Manson, Kurt Cobain, Fight Club, Richie Edwards, David Lynch and many more are included fitting the criteria for one of the 3 groups mentioned in the previous sentence.I will finish by repeating the review title..essential reading for an essential album.

This book is a find. I learned new things, it reminded me of my own musical taste transformations (mutations), and it inspired me to listen to something that I haven’t (consciously) listened to before. What I enjoyed was the beauty and richness of expression/language in it (“the terror of wonder and the wonder of terror”), the carefully selected fascinating details (depth of research too) and the findings of own truths (relatability) of it. Some of those flashbacks were the music that grows on you once you give it a second and so on listen, the complexity which has the potential to continuously reveal new universes of meaning. Others were the reminder of the music piece as a time machine to put you in a particular mode/mood/timestop: the song as a trigger that brings an avalanche of experiences from lives past, present and imagined. I see it as book about the abyss of feelings, addictions, conditions and resurrections of the searching artist. Thank you and kudos to the author.

The music and writing of NIN/Trent Reznor merits more recognition and attention so I was glad to notice this book which accounts for the classic 1994 album The Downward Spiral. Adam Steiner's writing is excellent and well-researched although it does at times veer into the realms of a philosophy dissertation the book reliably sticks to the meat of analysing one of the best albums of the 90s and one of the most interesting and creative writers of that era.