Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug

Nine Inch Nails were the band credited with bringing industrial music into the mainstream. For the uninitiated, industrial music is akin to listening to the soothing sounds of your household crockery going for a spin in the washing machine. Actually, as a fan, I'm doing it a bit of an injustice there. Industrial is more of a creative and aggressive fusion of different styles, but there's no denying to the untrained ear some of the earlier stuff when the genre rose to prominence in the 80s did sound a bit like someone trying to start a car with a shotgun.

Enough rambling - Nine Inch Nails rose to fame during the early 90s. Their first album, Pretty Hate Machine scored a big hit and some awards with the single Head Like a Hole. From there, their main creative driving force and until recently only official member, Trent Reznor, got angrier, releasing the ear splitting Broken EP (along with the infamous video accompanying it) in 92, before unleashing the masterpiece that was The Downward Spiral in 94. Upon which, for the remainder of the 90s at least, the band became icons for thousands of angsty teens the world over (and yes, dear reader, I was one of those). The band has continued to release albums periodically over the last two decades, including the epic double album The Fragile in 99, but the particular track we've chosen to showcase this week doesn't actually appear on any of them but does sit quite comfortably between two of their best albums.

Taken from the 1997 soundtrack to the David Lynch film, Lost Highway and also briefly used in a Vodafone advert in the early 2000's, here's The Perfect Drug with it's video which can be best described as a "goth's wet dream". Enjoy!