Fame is a difficult thing to manage. Done wrong, you’re on top of the world and at the bottom of a trench at the exact same time. And a lot of artists did it wrong from the 70s to the 90s. Disillusionment with the rockstar lifestyle, alienation from fans and loved ones, substance abuse, all common stories that we have heard a million times over. And, in many cases, that dissatisfaction has been poured into music. The Wall, In Utero, even Radiohead’s Kid A, to an extent, are all shining examples of that strife turned into art. But there’s one album that stands above them all in terms of its anger and jaded outlook. An album so abrasive, that when its mastermind sent it in, he apologized.

Welcome back to The Look Back, a look at the classic albums of old through modern ears. Today, we’re covering the sophomore album from industrial act Nine Inch Nails, 1994’s The Downward Spiral.

WHY IS THIS A CLASSIC?

Nine Inch Nails, in general, have always flirted with fame throughout their career. Their debut, Pretty Hate Machine, was a breakout hit that seriously helped to bring industrial into the mainstream eye. However, that album was far lighter in tone and sound, more dance-y and poppy, almost like an industrial successor to Depeche Mode. Downward Spiral, on the other hand, was unthinkably abrasive, making heavy use of…

It’s incredible how the most groundbreaking movements can be started from the smallest sparks. Take, for instance, a young guitar player who lost his fingertips in an accident at a sheet metal factory. Despite being told he would never play again, he found a way, melting down plastic bottles to create homemade thimbles, and tuning down his guitar to make the strings easier to hold down. I’m sure you can guess where this is going: that guitarist was none other than Tony Iommi, and that one accident would inevitably lead to the birth of a whole new genre of rock music: heavy metal.

Welcome to The Look Back (title still somewhat in progress), a look at the classic albums of old through modern ears. This is a little project I’m embarking on to see how albums that are held up as classics in their genres fare in the modern day, when so much has built on their foundations, all through the ears of a Gen Z kid who listened to plenty of these newer albums before checking out the classics. And for the inaugural installment, I felt it was only right to look at the album that indirectly inspired so many of Sputnik’s favorite albums, the progenitor of heavy metal, Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album.

WHY IS THIS A CLASSIC?

I mean… do I really even have to ask this? While other bands such as Led Zeppelin are sometimes…