Twenty-Six Years On My Way To Hell

Nine Inch Nails are my favourite cathartic juvenalia. Every time I listen to them I remember how I felt when I was fourteen... okay, sixteen... okay, twenty... okay, still: like an angry, embittered outsider desperate for sex. Trent Reznor is too fond of the word decay and things that rhyme with "hole," but he is able to deftly capture negative psychological sentiments with simple lyrics.

"Closer," with its "I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside... You bring me closer to God," ably captures the truth expressed by Malcom Muggeridge, "Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society."

"Burn," with its "This world rejects me, this world threw me away... Sometimes I think I could burn this whole world down," is the Platonic form of the sort of vengeful nihilism Nietzsche dubbed ressentiment.

"Only," with its "I just made you up to hurt myself... There is no you, there is only me," is the crystallization of solipsism.

"Down In It," with its "Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye, it was just about too small to see, but I watched it way too long and that dot was pulling me down..." absurdly conveys the inherently absurd downward spiral of obsessive thought.

"Wish, " with its immortal rallying cry "Twenty-six years, on my way to hell!" is particularly relevant to me, as I just turned twenty-six.

No, it's not Mozart. No, it's not even the more operatic negative depths of Swans. But I've seen Nine Inch Nails twice in concert, and they provide a ritual purgation for eternal adolescents no other misery-grinders can equal.