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"Big Man With A Gun" is the ninth track on The Downward Spiral. It is rumored that the sound effect at the beginning of the song is an adult film actress in the throes of passion. The sound was reportedly run through a program by Tommy Lee, who called the resulting sound "Steakhouse."
The song's lyrics were also the subject of controversy when they were cited by conservatives William Bennett and C. Delores Tucker during their crusade against explicit lyrics in rap and hip-hop, egregiously mislabeling Nine Inch Nails as one of these acts.
In the March 1996 issue of Spin Magazine, Trent Reznor said the following about this song: "The record was nearing completion. I had written those lyrics pretty quickly and I didn't know if I was going to use them or not. To me, Downward Spiral builds to a certain degree of madness, then it changes. That would be the last stage of delirium. So the original point of "Big Man With A Gun" was madness. But it was also making fun of the whole misogynistic gangsta-rap bullshit. … I listen to a lot of it, and I enjoy it. But I could do without the degree of misogny and hatred of women and abuse. Then, my song got misinterpreted as exactly that. It was probably a lack of being able to write. I've been taken out of context, and it's ridiculous."
Short, fast, violent, and energetic, this song contains many layers of different distorted guitar riffs, and features Reznor nearly speaking most of the lyrics with an equalizer filter on his voice. The drums before the final vocal refrain resemble the sound of semi-automatic gunshots. On the "March Of The Pigs" single, it does not contain the ending clip of "I Do Not Want This," as it does not transition directly from any other song. In the 5.1 surround edition of the 2004 re-release of The Downward Spiral, the scream heard at the beginning is replaced with a distant wail, which echoes around the speakers.
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