10 Legendary Rock Songs That Feature Weird Instruments

Everything about Trent Reznor's projects has almost felt like the total deconstruction of music. Although most of Nine Inch Nails' songs have the standard setup that you would find in any rock band, the digitization of every instrument makes for something that's a lot more ethereal than your average rock and roll. And when you listen to the Becoming, he practically turned the sound of horror into its own musical instrument.

Much of the Downward Spiral is comprised of certain samples to get you in that dark headspace, but what drives this song half the time can barely even be called an instrument. In the vein of other electronic artists, the continuous loop of disturbing sounds is a cut up version of someone screaming, taken from the movie Robot Jox, which was just taken and then reworked as a loop. Since the whole album revolves around the central character devolving into madness, this is the first sense of mania going on, as if the thoughts in his head are crying out in terror.

This would not be the last time that Trent would use this technique on the album though, whether it was the sample of a man being beaten at the start of Mr. Self Destruct or when he takes different screams from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and places them throughout the middle section of Reptile. Although they might not be instruments in the traditional sense, they do deliver on the central message of the record. This is going to go to some dark places, and there's no guarantee that you're going to come out unscathed.