Have you ever wanted your feet to really, truly hurt? Perhaps as if you'd stomped down somebody's empire of dirt? Well, step right up; march! Push! Nine Inch Nails are continuing their 30th anniversary celebrations for The Downward Spiral by collaborating with the iconic footwear company Dr. Martens.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross appeared on the cover of GQ in April and rattled off a laundry list of projects keeping them busy ahead of eventually getting around to making a new NIN album. That list included a T-shirt line, but they never mentioned anything about shoes. Would that have been a dead giveaway?
If you fuck like an animal and want everyone to know, the band have partnered with Dr. Martens to create a line of boots and shoes inspired by The Downward Spiral's Russell Mills-designed artwork, "distorted through the industrial lens of a modern musical masterpiece."
Three different styles — the eight-eye 1460 boot, the three-eye 1461 shoe with a crystal teeth design, and the extra tall 10-eye 1490 boot inspired by Nine Inch Nails' cornstarch-covered live performances — will be available via the Dr. Martens website (and select retailers) starting Friday (July 19).
"This collaboration just makes so much sense," NIN's Creative Director, John Crawford, told Hypebeast. "Not just because of the countless fans I've seen wearing Dr. Martens at NIN concerts over the years (myself included), but because NIN and Dr. Martens are both known for rejecting convention and expectation in favour of innovation."
According to the brand's promotional copy, the NIN-ified take on some of their classic footwear silhouettes comes as "a physical response to Nine Inch Nails' visceral, ground-breaking album. Our exclusive collaboration celebrates the 30th anniversary of The Downward Spiral. A musical monolith that transcends genres through an exploration of the bleakest themes and yet manages to reject nihilism for hope."
If you needed any further faith in the brand synergy here, N.I.C.E. Collective sold an exact replica of Reznor's go-to combat boots for $1,100 USD nearly a decade ago.