Nine Inch Nails (abbreviated as
NIN) is an
industrial rock band, founded
in 1988 by
Trent Reznor in
Cleveland,
Ohio. As its main
producer, singer, songwriter, and
instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its musical direction.
NIN's music straddles a wide range of genres, while retaining a characteristically intense sound using electronic instruments and processing. After recording a new album, Reznor usually assembles
a live band to perform with him; this live component is a separate entity from Nine Inch Nails in the recording studio.
On stage, NIN often employs spectacular visual elements to accompany its performances, which frequently culminate with the band
destroying musical instruments.
audiences warmly received Nine Inch Nails in its early years. The band produced several highly influential records in the 1990s that achieved widespread popularity: many Nine Inch Nails songs became radio hits,
two NIN recordings won
Grammy Awards, and the band has sold over 20 million albums worldwide,
with 10.5 million sales certified in the
United States alone.
In 2004, ''
Rolling Stone'' placed Nine Inch Nails at 94 on their list of the 100 greatest music artists of all time.
In spite of this acclaim, the band has had several feuds with the corporate side of the recording industry. Trent Reznor announced in 2007 that Nine Inch Nails would proceed independently of record labels.
In the past, NIN released major studio albums infrequently; remixes and live albums bridged these gaps in the band's catalog. Reznor cites his personal issues as the cause of these delays, and his songs often confront dark explorations of the self.
The most recent Nine Inch Nails album, ''
Year Zero'', is an exception to the usually introspective nature of Reznor's songwriting and the long gestation between major releases.
History
Early years
Initial ambitions for Nine Inch Nails in 1988 were to release one
12-inch single on a small European label.
Reznor was employed at that time as an assistant engineer and janitor at
Right Track Studios in Cleveland,
and asked studio owner Bart Koster for permission to record some
demos of his own songs for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, remarking that it cost him "just a little wear on
his tape heads".
While assembling these, the earliest NIN recordings, Reznor was unable to find a band that could articulate his songs as he wanted. Instead, inspired by
Prince, he played all the instruments except drums himself.
This role remains Reznor's on most of the band's studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians and assistants. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with
TVT Records.
Nine selections from the Right Track demos were unofficially released in 1994 as ''
Purest Feeling''; many of these songs would appear in revised form on ''
Pretty Hate Machine'' in 1989.
Several rumors have persisted about the origins of the name "Nine Inch Nails", one being that Reznor chose to reference the story of Jesus' crucifixion with nine inch spikes.
surmised that Reznor was inspired by the sight of nine inch fingernails on
Freddy Krueger.
Reznor maintains that he coined the name because it "abbreviated easily", rather than for "any literal meaning".
Reznor and Gary Talpas designed the Nine Inch Nails logo, which consists of the letters "NIN" set inside a border with the second "N" reversed. The logo first appeared on NIN's debut, "
Down in It", and was inspired by
Tibor Kalman's typography on the
Talking Heads album ''
Remain in Light''.
Talpas, a native of Cleveland, would continue to design NIN packaging art until 1997.
[{{cite web |url=]
http://www.cleveland.com/kidsnewsday/content.ssf?/homegrown/index.ssf?/homegrown/more/reznor/conspire.html |title= Trent Reznor: area co-conspirators |publisher= Cleveland.com |accessdate= 2006-12-18}}
''Pretty Hate Machine''
Written, arranged, and performed by Trent Reznor, NIN's first album ''
Pretty Hate Machine'' debuted in 1989. It marked Reznor's first collaboration with
Adrian Sherwood (who produced the lead single "Down in It" in
London, England without having met Reznor face-to-face)
and
Mark Flood Ellis. Flood's production would appear on each major Nine Inch Nails release until 1994, and Sherwood has done remixes for the band as recently as 2000. Reznor and his co-producers expanded upon the ''Purest Feeling'' demos, and added future singles "
Head Like a Hole" and "
Sin". ''
Rolling Stone'''s
Michael Azerrad described the album as "industrial-strength noise over a pop framework" and "harrowing but catchy music";
Reznor proclaimed this combination "a sincere statement" of "what was in
his head at the time".
After spending 113 weeks on the
Billboard 200,
''Pretty Hate Machine'' became one of the first
independently released records to attain
platinum certification.
aired videos for "Down in It" and "Head Like a Hole", but an explicit video for "Sin" was only released on the 1997 home video ''
Closure''.
In 1988, Reznor assembled a live band and toured North America as an opening act for
Skinny Puppy, later supporting
alternative rock artists such as
Peter Murphy and
The Jesus and Mary Chain.
On the latter tours, Reznor began smashing his equipment while on stage; ''Rockbeat'' interviewer Mike Gitter attributed NIN's early success in front of rock oriented audiences to this aggressive attitude.
Nine Inch Nails then embarked on a world tour that continued through the first
Lollapalooza festival in 1991, where the band "stole the show" from headliners
Jane's Addiction despite numerous equipment problems.
After a disastrous European reception opening for
Guns N' Roses, NIN returned to America amid pressure from TVT to produce a more commercial follow-up to ''Pretty Hate Machine''. In response, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference.
''Broken''
In his liner notes, Trent Reznor credits the 1991 Nine Inch Nails touring band as an influence on the 1992 ''
Broken''
EP's six songs and two bonus tracks. Reznor characterized the EP as a guitar-based "blast of destruction", which was intentionally "a lot harder
... than ''Pretty Hate Machine''".
Songs from ''Broken'' have garnered NIN their only two Grammy Awards: a performance of the EP's first single "
Happiness in Slavery" from
Woodstock '94,
and the second single "
Wish".
of the bands
Coil and
Throbbing Gristle directed a performance video for "Wish",
but the EP's most infamous video accompanied the song "Happiness in Slavery". The video was almost universally banned for its graphic depiction of
performance artist
Bob Flanagan disrobing in front of the camera and lying on a machine that pleasures, tortures, then kills him.
A third video for "Pinion", partially incorporated into MTV's ''Alternative Nation'' opening sequence, showed a toilet that apparently flushes into the mouth of an individual in bondage.
Reznor and Christopherson compiled these three clips along with videos for "Help Me I Am In Hell" and "Gave Up" into a longform music video also called ''
Broken''. "Broken" depicts the murder of a young man who is kidnapped and tortured while forced to watch the videos. This footage was never officially released, but instead appeared covertly among tape trading circles.
A separate performance video for "Gave Up" featuring
Richard Patrick and
Marilyn Manson was filmed at
10050 Cielo Drive (then renamed "Le Pig studios" by Reznor), site of the
Tate murders;
a live recording of "Wish" was also filmed, and both videos appeared on the ''Closure'' compilation in 1997.
''Broken'' was followed by the remix EP ''
Fixed'' in late 1992. Rather than tour in support of the new material, Reznor began living and recording full-time at Le Pig, working on a follow-up free of restrictions from his record label. ''The Downward Spiral'' was the result of this creative environment.
''The Downward Spiral''
Nine Inch Nails' second full-length album, ''
The Downward Spiral'', entered the Billboard 200 in 1994 at number two,
and it remains the highest-selling NIN release in the United States.
Inspired by late-1970s rock albums ''
Low'' and ''
The Wall'', ''The Downward Spiral'' features a wide range of textures and moods to illustrate the mental progress of a central character.
In his last work with the band to date, Flood once again co-produced several tracks; his longtime collaborator and fellow Englishman
Alan Moulder mixed most of ''The Downward Spiral'' and took on more extensive production duties for subsequent NIN releases.
The album spawned two singles: "
March of the Pigs" and "
Closer"; "
Hurt" and "Piggy" were issued to radio without a commercial single release. The music video for "Closer", directed by
Mark Romanek, received frequent rotation on MTV after the network made edits to it.
A radio edit that partially mutes the song's explicit lyrics also received extensive airtime.
"Hurt" enjoyed renewed success when it was
covered by
Johnny Cash in 2002, and Reznor has stated that hearing Cash's cover revitalized his interest in writing music.
The ''Closure'' video documented highlights from NIN's ''Self Destruct'' tour, including full live videos of "Eraser", "Hurt" and a
one-take "March of the Pigs" clip made for MTV.
Critical response to ''The Downward Spiral'' has generally been favorable: in 2005 the album was ranked 25th in
''Spin'''s list of the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005",
and in 2003 ''Rolling Stone'' ranked the album number 200 on their "
500 greatest albums of all time" list.
After ''The Downward Spiral'', Reznor produced a remix album entitled ''
Further Down the Spiral'', the only non-major NIN release to be certified
gold in the United States.
It featured contributions from electronic musician
Aphex Twin, producer
Rick Rubin, and former
Jane's Addiction guitarist
Dave Navarro. Two versions of ''Further Down the Spiral'' were released in 1995, both featuring exclusive content. A tenth anniversary deluxe reissue of ''The Downward Spiral'' was released in 2004.
The ''Self Destruct'' tour in support of the album reached its widest mainstream audience with a mud-drenched performance at Woodstock '94 that was broadcast on
Pay-Per-View and seen in as many as 24 million homes.
Nine Inch Nails received considerable mainstream success thereafter, performing with significantly higher production values and adding theatrical visual elements to the live show.
Around this time, Reznor's studio perfectionism,
struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer's block prolonged the production of a follow-up record.
''The Fragile''
Five years elapsed between ''The Downward Spiral'' and NIN's next major album, ''
The Fragile'', which arrived as a
double CD in September 1999.
On the heels of NIN's previous successes, media anticipation surrounded ''The Fragile'' more than a year before its arrival,
when it was already described as "oft-delayed".
[.] When the album was finally released, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 228,000 copies in one week and receiving favorable reviews.
''Spin'' hailed ''The Fragile'' as the "album of the year", and several songs from it were regular features on alternative rock radio stations.
However, the album slipped out of the Billboard Top 10 only a week after its release, and Reznor was forced to pay for the subsequent North American tour out of his own pocket.
According to Reznor, ''The Fragile'' was conceived by making "songwriting and arranging and production and sound design
... the same thing. A song would start with a drum loop or a visual and eventually a song would emerge out of it and that was the song."
Canadian rock producer
Bob Ezrin was consulted on the album's track listing; the liner notes state that he "provided final continuity and flow."
Before the album's release, the song "
Starfuckers, Inc." provoked media speculation about whom Reznor had intended its acerbic lyrics to satirize.
[.] Cinesexuality critic Patricia MacCormack interprets the song as a "scathing attack on the alternative music scene", particularly Reznor's former friend and protégé
Marilyn Manson.
The two artists put aside their differences when Manson co-directed and appeared in the song's music video, retitled "Starsuckers, Inc." and performed on stage with NIN at
Madison Square Garden in 2000. Nine Inch Nails released three commercial singles from the album in different territories: "
The Day the World Went Away" in North America; "
We're in This Together" in the
EU and Japan (on three separate discs); and an EP with "
Into the Void" as its lead track in Australia. MTV aired videos for the latter two tracks, as well as "Starsuckers, Inc."
Reznor followed ''The Fragile'' with another remix album, ''
Things Falling Apart'', released after the 2000 ''Fragility'' tour, which itself was recorded and released on CD, DVD, and VHS in 2002 as ''
And All that Could Have Been''. A deluxe edition of the live CD came with the companion disc ''
Still'', featuring stripped-down re-interpretations of songs from the band's entire career along with several new pieces of music.
''With Teeth''
Nine Inch Nails' fourth full-length album, ''
With Teeth'', was released in 2005, though it was leaked prior to its official release date. The album was written and recorded following Reznor's battle with alcoholism and substance abuse.
''Rolling Stone'''s
Rob Sheffield described the album as "vintage Nine Inch Nails",
while
Robert Christgau criticized the album as "shtick".
Like ''The Fragile'', ''With Teeth'' debuted on top of the Billboard 200.
The album's package art lacks typical liner notes; it simply lists the names of songs and co-producers, and the URL for an online
PDF poster with lyrics and full credits.
The entire album was made available in
streaming audio on the band's official
MySpace page in advance of its release date.
A promotional video for the song "
The Hand That Feeds" premiered on NIN's website in March 2005, rather than the traditional music channels, and Trent Reznor released the source files for "The Hand that Feeds" in
GarageBand format a month later, allowing fans to remix the song.
This release spawned an unofficial remix contest, in which over 500 fan remixes were submitted.
Reznor also released the source files for the album's second single "
Only" in a wider range of formats, including
Pro Tools and
ACID Pro; fans were also invited to access the band's official MySpace page to upload remixes, vote for favorites, and comment about them in a
blog.
directed a video for "Only" using primarily
computer-generated imagery. The third single, "
Every Day Is Exactly the Same", was released in April 2006 along with an EP of ''With Teeth'' remixes, but a planned music video was reportedly scrapped in the post-production stage.
The song topped ''Billboard'''s 2006 year-end
Hot Dance Singles Sales and
Hot Digital Songs charts.
Nine Inch Nails launched a North American arena tour in autumn 2005, supported by
Queens of the Stone Age and
Autolux.
Another opening act on this tour, hip-hop artist
Saul Williams, performed on stage with Nine Inch Nails at the
Voodoo Music Experience festival during a headlining appearance in hurricane-stricken New Orleans, Reznor's former home.
To conclude the ''With Teeth'' era of the band, NIN completed a tour of North American
amphitheaters in the summer of 2006, joined by
Bauhaus,
TV on the Radio, and
Peaches.
In late 2006, the official NIN website announced that a tour documentary entitled ''
Beside You in Time'' would be released in three formats: DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
After taking a break to complete work on a follow-up album, NIN embarked on a world tour in 2007. Trent Reznor personally invited
Ladytron to open for the band in Europe.
''Year Zero''
Nine Inch Nails' latest studio album, ''
Year Zero'', was released only two years after ''With Teeth''. With its lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Reznor described ''Year Zero'' as a
concept album criticizing the
United States government's current policies and how they will impact the world 15 years in the future.
Critical response to the album was generally favorable, with an average rating of 76% on
MetaCritic.
Robert Christgau described ''Year Zero'' as Reznor's "most songful album",
though
PopMatters' Andrew Blackie commented that "it cannot be said, in all honesty, that the music on ''Year Zero'' is ''good''".
emerged parallel to the ''Year Zero'' concept, expanding upon its storyline. Clues hidden on tour merchandise initially led fans to discover a network of fictitious, in-game websites that describe an "
Orwellian picture of the United States circa the year 2022".
Before ''Year Zero'''s release, unheard songs from the album were reportedly found on
USB drives hidden at NIN concert venues in Europe.
Fan participation in the
alternate reality game caught the attention of media outlets such as ''
USA Today'' and ''Billboard'', who have cited fan-site The NIN Hotline, forum Echoing the Sound, fan club The Spiral, and NinWiki as sources for new discoveries.
The album's first single, "
Survivalism", and other tracks from ''Year Zero'' were released as
multitrack audio files for fans to remix.
A posting on the official NIN website dated
August 15,
2007 announced the official ''
Year Zero Remixed'' compilation,
which is Nine Inch Nails' final new release on a major record label as of
November 20,
2007.
Influence
Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from "generic imitations" dating from NIN's initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a "truer, less imitative way".
Following the release of ''The Downward Spiral'', mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails' influence: David Bowie compared NIN's impact to that of
The Velvet Underground.
In 1997, Reznor appeared in ''
Time'' magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and ''Spin'' magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music".
The
RIAA certified sales for 10.5 million units of the band's albums in the United States,
which accounts for roughly half of the band's reported sales worldwide.
Bob Ezrin, producer for
Kiss,
Alice Cooper,
Peter Gabriel and
Pink Floyd, described Reznor in 2007 as a "true visionary" and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude.
During a rare appearance at the ''
Kerrang!'' Awards in
London that year, Nine Inch Nails accepted the ''Kerrang!'' Icon, honoring the band's long-standing influence on rock music.
Musical characteristics
All Music Guide's Steve Huey states that "Nine Inch Nails were the most popular
industrial group ever and were largely responsible for bringing the music to a mass audience."
Reznor has never referred to his own work as industrial music, but admits to borrowing techniques from such early industrial bands as
Throbbing Gristle and
Test Dept. Despite the disparity between those artists initially operating under the term "industrial" and Nine Inch Nails, it has become common in journalistic descriptions of Reznor's body of work to describe it as such. In actuality, the band's output has covered a wide range of genres: though Reznor acknowledged in ''Spin'' magazine that "Down in It" was influenced by early
Skinny Puppy, particularly their song "
Dig It", other songs from ''Pretty Hate Machine'' were described in the same interview as
synth-pop.
Reviewing ''The Fragile'', critic Steve Cooper noted that the album juxtaposes widely varied genres, such as solo piano in "The Frail" and
drum and bass elements in "Starfuckers, Inc."
Certain techniques and styles can be found throughout NIN's catalog. Songs such as "Wish" () and "The Day the World Went Away" () exhibit changes in
dynamics, changing from quiet to loud and back again, and end with an abrupt stop. Reznor's singing follows a similar pattern, frequently moving from whispers to screams. The band's music also occasionally features complex
time signatures, notably in "The Collector", from ''With Teeth'',
and concert favourite "March of the Pigs".
[Archived at FindArticles.com .] Reznor also uses
noise and distortion in his song arrangements, and incorporates
dissonance with
chromatic melody and/or harmony. These techniques are all used in the song "Hurt" (), which features a highly dissonant
tritone played on guitar during the verses, a B5#11, emphasized when Reznor sings the
eleventh note on the word "I" every time the B/F
dyad is played.
"Closer" () concludes with a chromatic piano
motif: the same melody that recurs on the title track of ''The Downward Spiral''.
On ''The Fragile'', Reznor revisits this technique of repeating a motif multiple times throughout different songs, either on a different musical instrument, with a transposed harmony, or in an altered tempo.
Band members
Nine Inch Nails as a live band is generally understood to be a separate entity from its recording studio-based component.
[Archived at WELL.][Archived at Canadian Online Explorer.] Occasionally, past band members are invited to participate in the process, but when not directly involved with recording new material, Nine Inch Nails' lineup tends to change drastically between major tours. Aside from Trent Reznor remaining on lead vocals and guitar, nothing about the live band has remained constant since its inception. Reznor cited the long gestation period between studio albums as part of the reason for these frequent personnel changes.
Beginning in late 2005, the live band featured
Aaron North on guitar,
Jeordie White on bass guitar,
Alessandro Cortini on keyboards, and
Josh Freese on drums, though all occasionally performed with different instruments.
This lineup toured Europe, Asia, Australia, and America through 2007.
Trent Reznor reported that he would disband the "rock band configuration" of his touring lineup after their concert in
Honolulu, Hawaii on
September 18,
2007, and would explore other means to perform Nine Inch Nails material on subsequent tours.
Corporate entanglements
Trent Reznor is an outspoken critic of the music industry, particularly corporate influence on his artistic freedom. As a result, Nine Inch Nails has clashed with several corporations, culminating in a decision to proceed as a free agent without any recording label contracts.
In the early 1990s, Nine Inch Nails was involved in a much-publicized feud with TVT Records, the first record label to sign the band. Reznor objected to the label's attempted interference with his intellectual property.[Archived at The NIN Hotline .]
As part of the alternate reality game which accompanied the release of ''Year Zero'', three tracks from the album were intentionally "leaked" prior to their official release at a number of NIN concerts on USB flash drives."Last time I was here, I was doing a lot of complaining about the ridiculous prices of CDs down here. And that story got picked up and got carried all around the world and now my record label all around the world hates me, because I yelled at them, I called them out for being greedy fucking assholes. I didn't get a chance to check, has the price come down at all? I see a no, a no, a no... Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means - STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right."
On October 8, 2007, Trent Reznor announced with "great pleasure" that Nine Inch Nails had fulfilled its contractual commitments to the recording industry and was now free to proceed as a "totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label". Discography
In addition to its major studio releases, Nine Inch Nails has released numerous
remix albums,
singles with extensive
b-sides, and tour documentaries. Most of these are labeled with
''halos'', a sequential numbering system that has been applied to most official NIN releases.
Nine Inch Nails has also recorded five songs specifically for film soundtracks:
Joy Division's "Dead Souls" for ''
The Crow'', "
Burn" and a reworked version of "Something I Can Never Have" for ''
Natural Born Killers'' in 1994; "
The Perfect Drug" for 1997's ''
Lost Highway''; and, in 2001, "
Deep" for ''
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider''.
Other film music, such as "You Know What You Are?" from
Clint Mansell's ''
Doom'' soundtrack, constitutes remixes of the band's official catalog by other artists.
Reznor himself has remixed a number of songs by other artists, but only a few are
credited to NIN. The original music from the video game ''
Quake'' is credited to "Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails";
the band helped record sound effects for ''Quake'' and the NIN logo also appears on ammunition boxes in the game.
Prospective re-releases
Reznor has stated that he would like to release remastered editions of ''Pretty Hate Machine'', ''Broken''/''Fixed'', and ''The Fragile'' akin to ''The Downward Spiral'' tenth anniversary re-release.
A deluxe two-disc DVD version of ''
Closure'' was delivered to
Interscope Records in 2004, but has been indefinitely delayed.
Both discs appeared on
BitTorrent networks in December 2006.
Awards
Grammy Awards and nominations
2 Wins, 8 Nominations
"Wish" — Best Metal Performance, 1992 (win) References
Other