cdm72's Full Review: Further Down the Spiral [US] [EP] by Nine Inch Nai...
I have to say, if not for Halo 6, this may just be my least favorite, and least played, Nine Inch Nails CD, the messy and disjointed Halo 10: Further Down the Spiral.
Released in mid-1995, Halo 10 serves as a companion and remix disc to the brilliant and classic Halo 8. However, whereas that disc was original, intriguing, and fierce, Halo 10 is just a sad attempt to reclaim some of that brilliance that was evident the first time around. And it was an attempt that fell flat on pretty much every count.
Let’s take diversity for example. Halo 8 had 14 tracks. Halo 10 has 11. You’d think that would leave things pretty wide open for some interesting takes on the best of Halo 8. Unfortunately, three of those 11 tracks focus on remixing the album opener, “Mr. Self Destruct”. Three remixes of one song? Another three tracks remix Halo 8’s “Eraser”. So we’ve just blown 6 of 11 tracks remixing TWO songs from the original album. Another two songs on Halo 10 are original compositions from Aphex Twin (stage name of DJ Richard D. James), “At the Heart of It All” and “The Beauty of Being Numb” (well, “Beauty” is called an original track, but in truth it sounds to me like yet another “Mr. Self Destruct” remix). So that’s 8 songs and, so far, we’ve only remixed two Halo 8 tracks. The last three songs fare better with remixes of “Piggy” called (Nothing Can Stop Me Now), “The Downward Spiral” called (The Bottom), and “Hurt” called (Quiet) which, to be honest, it doesn’t sound all that different from the original to me.
Halo 10 runs for just over an hour, and an hour of “Mr. Self Destruct” and “Eraser” essentially on repeat is not something I need to pay full price for.
I think the great failing in this CD, much like that of Halo 6, was that Trent Reznor has, in my opinion, always worked best when he’s in charge, but with Halo 10 he allowed several other producers into the room and gave them the reigns. It took 4 people to remix “The Downward Spiral” (John Balance, Peter Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and Danny Hyde), and, while it is one of the better, more interesting remixes on the CD, still, 4 people? These same 4 also remixed “Erasor” on (Polite), all 1:15 of it.
Reznor’s music has always had a very personal resonance. You can listen to his albums and know you’re pretty much hearing his own thoughts, his own struggles and torments, with an industrial guitar behind it. No one is ever going to be able to connect on so personal a level with his music as he himself will, and a lot of attempts from those on the outside to take these very emotional and meaningful songs and try to make them somehow original is doomed to failure.
Another problem for me with this disc is the lack of originality. Never mind that so many songs focus on remixing a mere 2 tracks, but the remixes aren’t even that original. Take the “Mr. Self Destruct” remixes. J. G. Thirlwell did two remixes, called “Self Destruction, Part Two” and “Self Destruction, Final”. They’re placed on the cd at tracks 3 and 9 and it’s a good thing there’s so much space, because, to me, they sound almost like one 15-minute song, only with a 5-song gap in the middle. And that’s only two. You throw in the first one, “The Art of Self Destruction, Part One” (remixed by Reznor with Sean Bevin and Brian Pollack) and you’ve got over 20 minutes of “I am the voice inside your head (and I control you)”. Enough, already, I get it.
I wanted so badly to love Halo 10. When I first learned of its existence, I searched everywhere in town for it (before the days of $9.99 internet service), but came up empty-handed only to stumble across a battered copy in a Wal-Mart rack (Wal-Mart eventually stopped selling NIN cds, didn’t they?) late one night while Christmas shopping in 㤄. I bought it without a second thought and smiled with glee on my first listen. “Piggy” was good stuff, and I was all aglow as I went into “The Art of Self Destruction, Part One”, but then “Self Destruction, Part Two” and on down the line, I was smiling only on the outside, trying to convince myself I liked it. At the very least, it would grow on me. But by the time I got to “Erased, Over, Out”, I knew this was not the cd for me. I remember very clearly, halfway through the song, which is nothing more than a very moody, avant garde-sounding instrumental with Reznor’s distorted vocal in the background chanting “ERRRRAAAAAAAAAASSSSEEEEEEE MMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!” throughout the entire song, I stopped what I was doing, looked at the cd player and asked out loud, “What the fk am I listening to?”
I tried over the years to force familiarity on myself with this cd, certain that was the problem, I just didn’t know it well enough to understand all its idiosyncrasies, but that once I did, I’d realize just what a smart record it was. I didn’t. And it’s not. It may have gone gold, over a year after its release, but for me it’s just so much distorted mood music, and there’s only so much of that a person can take. It doesn’t help that over half the cd is spent remixing only 2 songs and that in one of those groups, the Self Destruct set, they all sound alike anyway. Whatever the failing, Halo 10 isn’t for me. There’s nothing at all on here that you can’t find in even better form elsewhere (hint: it’s called Halo 8).
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