The one band Trent Reznor was convinced everyone hated
When it comes to Nine Inch Nails, hate was never exactly a bad word to Trent Reznor.
While he may not have been the same destructive person that he was when he was onstage, when he walked into the studio, he knew that directing his anger in the right direction was what made so many of his dark masterpieces sound so great, like the massive shot of adrenaline on a song like ‘March of the Pigs’. But even if there were tunes that were documents of his rage, he could speak out when he thought that bands were using that rage for the wrong reasons.
Say what you will about how ugly The Downward Spiral is, but you can’t say that it’s not a work of art. He spent months crafting every single song to perfection, and while the grotesque nature of a tune like the title track or ‘Closer’ can be a little bit repulsive for someone who hadn’t heard any Nine Inch Nails songs before, there’s also a dark beauty to the way that a song like ‘A Warm Place’ unfolds midway through the record.
He wanted to focus on what would happen to get into that creative headspace, but there were also more than a few times when things got a little out of hand. ‘Big Man With A Gun’ definitely sounds like it belongs on the record, but when you take into account the backlash it had for being too profane and Reznor’s own dislike of the song, it’s not like he was going out of his way to defend what he had made, either.
Granted, there were so many people who picked up on that song and took every piece of it to heart. Reznor was simply parodying the overindulgent lyrics that he heard in most gangsta rap, but when the rise of nu metal started to really kick into gear, everything seemed to be a lot more disrespectful. Grunge had taught everyone to be accepting of different kinds of music, but a lot of the biggest assholes at Woodstock 1999 were a lot more concerned with being the lowest scum when they were lighting those fires and sexually assaulting everyone they came in contact with.
And no one stoked those flames quite like Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit back in the day. Whereas Korn was more interested in crying out in pain whenever they made their tunes, Durst was the kind of guy who seemed to be insulted that everyone didn’t think he was God’s gift to music. I mean, who could say no to a guy with a backwards hat screaming about doing it all for the nookie and complaining about being a reject and how no one likes him?
Jonathan Davis felt real when he was singing, but Reznor felt that everyone had to be in on the joke that what Durst was doing was terrible, saying, “I’m not going to say that Limp Bizkit sucks. You know it, I know it, I don’t need to say it.” But that didn’t mean that the Bizkit army didn’t show up in droves for when they released such records like Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water.
The songs were everywhere, but if we take a look outward for a little bit, it’s not like everyone has fond memories of talking about how they were a reject. In all fairness, Durst seemed to be having a lot more fun up there screaming his brains out and attempting to rap as best as he could, but since he was in the same kind of genre that produced bands like Staind, it wasn’t like he was making music that was meant to be listened to for its quality.
And while the band do at least seem to be in on their own joke and are happy to release records like Still Sucks later on in their career, what they were doing was miles below what Reznor wanted his music to be. In his mind, that was music for the masses that would be forgotten in a few years, but records like The Fragile and With Teeth would be around long after the hype had died down.
