Nine Inch Nails - The Factory of Mr. Self Destruct

Trent Reznor is one of the key figures of Nineties rock: the artist who managed to fuse the poetry of the most introspective songwriters, the neurosis of the doomed rocker, and the destructive drives of industrial music. With Reznor, industrial music reached its most complete and definitive hybridization with rock, completing the path blazed by Ministry: Reznor himself embodies the perfect meeting point between the producer, manipulator and builder of "artificial" sounds and the rock musician, with all his poetic sensitivity, his energy, his purely "physical" impact aimed, without mincing words, at expressing a piercing "weltschmerz". Above all, Reznor possesses the quality that almost every master of industrial music lacks: melodic talent, a genuine ability to write memorable songs.

Reznor honed his weapons through a discography that, over the span of fifteen years, produced: three albums (one of them a double), one EP, three remix albums and one official live release. Very little if you consider the average output of most industrial bands - and if you think instead of rock, Reznor represents an even more striking exception: in an increasingly frantic market, which other successful artist would have the nerve to let five years pass between one record and the next? An anti-rockstar who became, almost against his will, an essential reference point for an entire musical movement, both for those who came before him and for those who followed. A rockstar who makes self-harm his creed (and not only in his lyrics, but also in his videos and above all in his reckless live performances); a producer capable of turning into a mass phenomenon both his own music and that of a figure like Marilyn Manson; a "fragile" and sensitive singer-songwriter. But before becoming all this, Trent Reznor was about as far as you could imagine from the possessed "one-man-band" of Nine Inch Nails. Born in 1965 in Mercer, a small town in Pennsylvania, at just five years old Reznor discovered - or rather was discovered to have - a precocious talent at the piano. A child prodigy whose childhood was split between the music of Mozart, teachers, rehearsals and concerts, and marked by a difficult relationship with his parents (the only one who really took care of Trent was his maternal grandmother), who divorced after a few years. But more than the piano, which he gradually abandoned, the young Reznor was fascinated by electronics, and having left his small town for Cleveland, Ohio, he began taking his first steps in the city's underground scene, working as a keyboardist in various bands. With one of these, Innocent, he recorded his first album in 1985, in a fairly conventional synth-wave-pop style. Among the various musical experiences he had in Cleveland, the key event for Trent was meeting drummer Chris Vrenna, with whom he forged not only a personal friendship but also the embryo of what would become Nine Inch Nails: in the meantime, Reznor supported himself working at Right Track studios, where he had the chance to learn recording, production, mixing and sound manipulation techniques.

That's how, in 1988, he began recording songs entirely written, arranged and performed by himself, hiding behind the name Nine Inch Nails: initially he was helped only by Vrenna and, to a lesser extent, by Richard Patrick (guitarist, later founder of Filter); once he landed a deal with the label TVT, the songs were reworked and refined with the help of heavyweights like Flood, Keith LeBlanc and Adrian Sherwood, and also remixed in London by John Fryer, famous for his work with the This Mortal Coil project (cited by Reznor as a source of inspiration, along with artists such as Jane's Addiction, Prince and Public Enemy). In 1989 Nine Inch Nails made its official debut on the record market with the single "Down In It", the prelude to the first album Pretty Hate Machine. The album became a genuine cult record within the industrial-rock scene of the time. Still showing the influence of the then-undisputed rulers of the genre, Ministry and Skinny Puppy, the debut work of the twenty-four-year-old Reznor presents an all-round musician with an overflowing personality, capable of camouflaging himself behind arrangements that at times nod to hip-hop (as with the single "Down In It"), or sink into suffocating "dark" atmospheres (as with tracks like the menacing "Sanctified" - though a bit too reminiscent of Ministry's "Cannibal Song" - and the tragic "Terrible Lie"), but also capable of soaring into infectious dance tracks that instantly became staples of alternative clubs (the second single "Head Like A Hole" and above all "Sin", Reznor's first true masterpiece, which would be a gem of melodic synth-pop were it not disfigured by a neurotic mood and increasingly violent, distorted accelerations). Reznor's superior quality is still hidden behind a conventional electro approach, but his innovative gifts are already there, waiting to explode: in the most evocative track, "Something I Can Never Have", an unsettling ballad for voice, piano and background noise alone, Trent also reveals his extraordinary talents as an introspective singer-songwriter.

In the years that followed, word of mouth and the support of a major label like Island pushed the album to triple platinum status: Nine Inch Nails' abrasive electronic rock became a sensational mainstream phenomenon (a few years later Pretty Hate Machine would even be included by Rolling Stone among the "200 essential rock albums"), and Reznor's live activity intensified. This is where the two faces of Nine Inch Nails reveal themselves: a "one-man-band" on record, an unleashed rock band on stage (alongside Reznor were guitarist Richard Patrick, plus a rhythm section made up of James Woolley and Jeff Ward). Live performing had no small influence on Reznor's sound, which shifted toward decidedly more "rock" dynamics and structures, pushing electronics into the background, on the EP Broken, released in 1992. Just an EP, due to disputes with the label TVT (in the meantime Reznor had also founded his own label, Nothing Records), with six tracks, some of which were destined to become bona fide classics quoted ad nauseam (as is the case with "Wish"), but despite Reznor's great class as a songwriter, even in the most violent moments ("Gave Up"), and the extraordinary work on the sound (the producer is Flood), the EP betrays a decidedly heavy debt to Ministry: only "Happiness in Slavery", a pile-up of rhythms, breaks, screams and extremely violent riffs, through which an extremely catchy synth-pop chorus nonetheless pushes its way forward, sounds truly personal, and not by chance became a new hit, helped also by a highly controversial, censored video. Broken was accompanied by another EP, Fixed, with remixes courtesy of, among others, Flood, Adrian Sherwood and Butch Vig.

An interesting but still not very incisive album, useful as a starting point, and a pleasant but not very personal EP: that was enough for Reznor to build frenzied anticipation around his every move. The rumors circulating about his activities in 1994 caused a sensation: Reznor had set up a studio in the Beverly Hills mansion where, in 1969, followers of Charles Manson murdered actress Sharon Tate; Reznor turned talent scout and successful music entrepreneur, producing and promoting (thus guaranteeing success and confirming his reputation as the Midas of American underground rock) the record of an unknown Florida band whose music and shows, steeped in a crude and gruesome cabaret of provocation, led by the satanic charisma and stagecraft cunning of Brian Warner aka "Marilyn Manson", immediately scandalized audiences.

But above all, in May 1994 (one month after the suicide of Kurt Cobain), Reznor released his second album, and this time it would be both a culmination and a new beginning for rock. The concept album The Downward Spiral, an extraordinary monument that absorbs all the "dirty" consciousness of the era: Reznor follows the infernal path of his most unstable and psychotic side, an alter ego tellingly renamed "Mr. Self Destruct", down the spiral of madness, self-annihilation, violence and rage. Steeped in fantasies of sexual domination ("Piggy", "Closer" and above all the stunning "Big Man With a Gun"), in malevolent attacks on the "system" ("Heresy", "March Of The Pigs") and in self-analysis loaded with piercing, desperate frustration every time the character has to reckon with his own personal reality ("The Becoming" - perhaps the masterpiece - the refined suite "Ruiner", and the tragic climax "Eraser"), the album is an almost relentless journey through pounding rhythms, crushing beats and impossibly distorted guitars, culminating in the suicidal fantasy of the title track and in the disarming final move, the acoustic ballad "Hurt", which is true catharsis, a reckoning with oneself through suffering, as well as one of the most moving songs around (it would be covered years later by Johnny Cash in a version perhaps even more touching, and performed live many times by David Bowie, an artist who shared mutual admiration and influence with Reznor - just listen to Bowie's "Outside" (1995) to believe it - and with whom Nine Inch Nails would play live on several occasions). Reznor's masterpiece is complete: having shaken off the shadow of his "masters" Ministry (who, in fact, starting right from this point, ran out of ideas and substance), having earned the respect of the entire rock world (besides the already mentioned Bowie, it's worth noting Adrian Belew, guitarist and frontman of King Crimson, who plays many of the guitar parts on the album), and having confirmed commercial success (5 million copies sold) without caving in the slightest to the compromises of the music business, the musician from Cleveland also created the work that, more than any other, captures the "dark" imagination of his time: the sensationalism and spectacle of violence and sex (how well such a record resonates in an era when serial killers were becoming fashionable!); all the cynicism and self-harm typical of the imagination of the millions of young people freshly orphaned by Cobain's death, who with Reznor suddenly became "adults"; and, what matters most, the "Spiral" is an extraordinary musical work in terms of variety, imagination and sonic cohesion, meticulously chiseled together with mixing wizards like Flood and Alan Moulder.

Equally stunning is the "deep dive" work, the remix album Further Down The Spiral (1995): sound-manipulation wizards like Coil, his friend Charlie Clouser (Reznor's live keyboardist) and the master J. G. Thirlwell (aka Foetus) accentuate the electronic side of the main work without losing any of its impact or its power to unsettle: particularly memorable are a heartfelt live version of "Hurt" and the industrial symphony "At The Heart Of It All", created for the occasion by Aphex Twin. The years that follow, however, are difficult both personally and professionally: a world tour that keeps Reznor and his band (Robin Finck, guitar - Danny Lohner, bass - Charlie Clouser, keyboards - Chris Vrenna, drums) busy for nearly two years, and above all the suffocating pressure of the mass media (a tough ordeal, for him, being one of the most talked-about - indeed, gossiped-about - figures in America) push Reznor to the brink of a nervous breakdown. In 1997, after the success of the album "Antichrist Superstar", his happy working relationship and friendship with Marilyn Manson came to an end, as Manson had by then become a superstar whose MTV-ready shallowness instantly eclipsed the fame of his own mentor; the following year, his friend Chris Vrenna also left the project (and in 2000 keyboardist Charlie Clouser would do the same). Unable to follow up his masterpiece (the only sonic trace of Nine Inch Nails in the meantime being, in 1997, the mediocre single "The Perfect Drug", for the soundtrack - which he himself curated - of David Lynch's film "Lost Highway"), Reznor reacted by shutting himself away in the ultra-technological studios he had set up at his home, his new residence in New Orleans. Working for months, picking up the pieces of his personal crisis, summoning all his resentments, his paranoias and his ghosts, Reznor composed dozens of tracks, giving himself over to a true tour de force. The idea, given his creative block, was to release an album of 8-10 tracks, most of them instrumental: "and I failed, failed completely," Reznor says.

And indeed, what came out in the end was The Fragile (1999), a colossal double album yet incredibly intimate and personal: Reznor puts himself fully on the line, unafraid to let his music drift through the most disparate styles (and, as with every self-respecting double album, the main - indeed only - flaw of The Fragile is that it puts too much on the table), let alone afraid to go against the expectations of those "expecting a Downward Spiral 2" or those demanding he "save rock". Reznor surrenders completely to his inspiration and, once again aided in the studio by the great Alan Moulder, sets off again from the brutal violence of the "Spiral" with tracks like the menacing "The Wretched" and the exceptional opening track "Somewhat Damaged", which exorcises the crisis just passed in a memorable crescendo, arriving at grandiose, atmospheric songs like "The Day the World Went Away" (which echoes the melody of "Hey Jude", complete with a final choir, though immersed in a deafening "orchestra" of distorted guitars), the single "We're In This Together" (a splendid rock song about "dependency. dependency on everything, dependency on things and on people") and the extraordinary title track, simply one of the most beautiful ballads rock has given us in recent years, embellished by a spine-tingling solo. Reznor also proves himself a great "conductor" on the dazzling instrumental mini-suite "Just Like You Imagined", a true study in a rock that is at once "artificial" and "symphonic": an incredible track, of extraordinary scope, a triumph of imagination and creative freedom, made even more unforgettable by Adrian Belew's guitar contortions.

But across all these highly heterogeneous tracks, Reznor manages to keep his underlying stamp intact: his "industrial rock" is always right there, front and center, in the sound manipulations, in the electronic rhythms, in the liberating violence. Gradually the record becomes more and more intimate and restrained, eventually flowing into the delicate, visionary wonder that is "La Mer" and into the dramatic, almost new-age air of "The Great Below". This is where the second disc begins, which, consistently, is entirely imploded, where all the "fragility" that Reznor exploded, screamed and laid bare in the first part now collides with the instability of his own personality. But there's no longer any need for the homicidal fantasies of the past: the sounds alone suffice, suffocating and distorted, and so do the atmospheres, increasingly cryptic, dark, diseased. "Decay" is a word that recurs very often in the lyrics: that's what Reznor is talking about - picking up the pieces of your own life and gluing them back together only to see that beyond lies nothing but decay, aging, more suffering: but now the depression is, if not overcome, at least internalized: the tormented artist discovers himself a grown man, having found a balance he wouldn't even have dreamed of finding just a few years earlier. "Mr. Self Destruct" no longer exists: the new manifesto-track is called "The Way Out Is Through": having faced the crisis, the depression, the loneliness, one finds the way out, which is not healing but acceptance and self-awareness: "Ripe (With Decay)" is the final track, a bizarre instrumental collage that closes this gigantic work on notes of quiet unease. This is how Reznor describes the album: "Instead of trying to analyze what I was creating, I simply let it flow to see what came out. It was simply about never being afraid, and in the end I felt truly liberated."

The customary remix album, Things Falling Apart (2000), is forgettable.

With his fierce band by his side (Vrenna had been replaced by the phenomenal Jerome Dillon), this new, "mature" Reznor embarked on a new world tour, the "Fragility Tour", from which the live album + DVD And All That Could Have Been (2002) was drawn, accompanied by Still, an album of unreleased tracks and alternate versions: among the unreleased tracks, particularly beautiful are "And All That Could Have Been" itself and the instrumentals "Leaving Hope" (almost ambient) and "The Persistence of Loss" (a very refined chamber adagio); among the alternate versions, a hugely stretched-out, estranging rendition of "The Day The World Went Away" stands out. A complex and brilliant artist, courageous and disturbing, of fundamental importance to contemporary rock, Reznor embodies the anti-hero par excellence, the symbol of the Nineties anti-rockstar, of the artist of "rupture", against everyone and everything, especially against himself: his is the battle of a lifetime, a battle won solely through the strength of his talent. "I sat down. I looked at myself in the mirror. I tried to remember that music is the one thing that has saved me in the past. Probably, if it weren't for my career with Nine Inch Nails, I wouldn't be in this world anymore. My music made me feel indispensable, unique." Exactly! Unique, in every sense of the word.

In 2005, six years after The Fragile, a new album came out, titled With Teeth. Of the countless paths explored on Fragile, Reznor chooses to delve deeper into those that had already yielded memorable results on that record in tracks like "We're In This Together", "The Day The World Went Away" or "The Fragile". He chooses to dive into more direct, less complex structures, ones that give prominence to voice, words, melodies, choruses, perhaps as he had never dared to do before. Without giving up any of the trademarks of the Nine Inch Nails sound, Reznor finally delivers what his art had always been striving toward: he delivers a collection of songs. Period.

Because if there's one thing about With Teeth that strikes you, it's precisely the fact that it's an album built first and foremost on melodies - those oblique yet catchy melodies that Reznor has always been a master of. And it's a bleak, intimate record: Reznor seems to look around and see only emptiness, distance, loneliness: there's no longer any need to resort to violence, except in isolated episodes like "You Know What You Are" and, to a lesser extent, "Getting Smaller"; there's no longer any need for cathartic streams of consciousness. What stirs between the lines of the record is a Reznor who has perhaps finally made peace with himself, but is by no means at peace with the world around him. Yet there's no more anger either: all that seems to remain is a subtle, detached despondency, regrets and painful reflections (above all the aching "Right Where It Belongs").

This is a Reznor who looks back, who looks to a past, even a distant one ("Only" comes straight out of the Eighties with no attempt whatsoever at "modernization", but it's also one of the record's less convincing moments, along with the weak single "The Hand That Feeds", while the nostalgia exercise works better on "Sunspots"), in search of a safe refuge. And Reznor has always been, first and foremost, a singer-songwriter in the most classic sense of the term: this side of him finally comes out into the open, and so the opening "All The Love In The World", which starts quietly with voice and melody entrenched behind a cautious drum 'n' bass pulse, gradually gains courage and turns into a steady, chanting chorus that couldn't be more pop. And above all, there are genuine gems like the driving "The Collector" and, especially, "Every Day Is Exactly The Same", which, with its immediately catchy chorus and an emotional crescendo that only Reznor can pull off, represents the tone of the album better than any other track.

If in the middle section Reznor occasionally betrays some lapses in inspiration, the album's closing stretch reaches heights worthy of his old masterpieces: "The Line Begins To Blur", an acidic, heavy verse that unwinds into an epic, desolate chorus, textbook stuff; "Beside You In Time", a spell of a song: Reznor whispers a lullaby, and the mixing board drowns it in an ocean of deformed, repeated, exhausting feedback, right up to the final explosion, even more muffled and dreamlike. And from its ashes rises the already-mentioned "Right Where It Belongs", an intense, desperate confession worthy of following in the footsteps of the legendary "Hurt", featuring one of the finest lyrics Reznor has ever written.

In the end, with Reznor having retreated back into his "Home", here we are, stunned by conflicting feelings: there is, no point denying it, a tinge of disappointment, partly because after so many years expectations had grown too high, and partly because, either way, the man's inspiration and imagination are no longer at 100 percent. With Teeth is nothing more than the minor work of a major artist.

Trent Reznor displays renewed ambition and inspiration on Year Zero (2007), his most direct and "political" album by far, bitter invective and pure adrenaline with no beating around the bush. Yet his special ability to turn the roughest, most brutal material into something highly sophisticated remains intact, thanks to sonic and melodic solutions that are still cutting-edge, especially on a track like "The Beginning Of The End". Opening the curtain is the dazzling "Hyperpower", which already lays out, clearly expressed, the central themes of Trent's new effort: chaos, disgust, war, present and future catastrophes.

A broader, far more accomplished work than its uneven predecessor, Year Zero ranges across a spectrum of contrasting sonic coordinates: fans of "hard and pure" industrial can rejoice, wallowing in that pool of toxic waste that is the lethal "Vessel"; the splendid, classic "The Good Soldier", on the other hand, will satisfy those who want a more "synthetic" and accessible Trent.

Perhaps "In This Twilight" is the one to please everyone, a perfect middle ground. Of course, even amid all these excellent tracks, one thing needs to be made clear: we are no longer in the presence of the Reznor capable of turning every gesture and thought into something epochal: that Reznor would never have stumbled into a mess like "Capital G", for instance. Nor would he have needed to plagiarize his own past with so little imagination, as he does on the otherwise thoroughly enjoyable single "Survivalism", shamelessly recycling the fiercest tracks from the old Broken (1992). Far better, instead, is the atmospheric gem "The Greater Good", where he dusts off the ghosts of his maturity, the ones that populated the masterpieces of Fragile.

Setting aside the usual, predictable, extraordinary work on sound, the trademark of the celebrated Reznor & Moulder partnership, "My Violent Heart", "The Warning", and the stunning "Meet Your Master" are all flawless tracks, which Trent now seems able to churn out on autopilot. And then there's "God Given", a chorus and a sonic framework that only Nine Inch Nails could possibly produce.

With Year Zero, Reznor proves he's still capable of surprising, both in his most reflective moments and his most violent ones.

With Ghosts I-IV (2008), Reznor brings to life a long-held project: an instrumental, introspective, concise collection. Recorded and composed in the space of ten weeks with his usual studio partners Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, and the active participation of valuable collaborators, old (Adrian Belew) and new (Alessandro Cortini, Brian Viglione of Dresden Dolls), the album is first and foremost a marketing move. Going one step further than what Radiohead did in 2007 with "In Rainbows", Reznor offers his fans a work immediately available in digital format (downloadable from the dedicated website for 5 dollars), while also packaging it in two CD versions, a "regular" one and a "deluxe" edition limited to 2500 copies at the modest price of 300 dollars, already reported sold out. There's even a quadruple vinyl edition. All of it under the banner of "best package ever".

But Ghosts I-IV is also an exercise in illuminating artistic and creative restyling. Reznor retreats back into himself, dressing up in contemporary clothes feelings, sounds and rough edges that seemed to have worn themselves out. It's no coincidence that Adrian Belew returns, his contribution proving essential.

Fleeting, volatile fragments, clumps of derailed rock, acidic industrial electronics, pianistic minimalism: components that cancel each other out while feeding off one another. A long journey, nearly two hours; 36 short, dense instrumental pieces, each one a miniature universe, self-contained and independent.

The "Ghosts" project was conceived not as an album, but as a potentially infinite container. There's no voice, and with Reznor that's no small thing. Yet the Nin brand comes through loud and clear, from synthesizer breaths stirring calm, dark waves of piano to the most deviant, psychotic accelerations.

Gripped by an irrepressible urge to release everything that crosses his mind in digital format, little more than a month after Ghosts, Reznor puts out on the nin.com website another new album available for free download, this time a traditional work, an album of "songs", performed by Reznor with his trusted Cortini, Freese and Robin Finck (welcome back!).

The Slip, however, let's say it right away, contains a handful of songs that don't quite work. A good half of the album slips by leaving nothing behind but an irritating sense of wasted time. Starting with the bloated, sloppy "1,000,000" and moving on to "Head Down", Reznor gives the impression of having spent more time in the gym than sitting in his studio coming up with presentable melodies and arrangements. "Letting Go" is plasticized nastiness that pushes to absurd extremes the least convincing passages of albums like With_Teeth and Year Zero. There's no particular thread holding these songs together. It says it all that the best of the lot are the likeable "Echoplex" and "Discipline", which dust off Trent's never-extinguished love for 80s synth sounds.

That's true, at least, for the first half of the record. In the second part, though, Trent reawakens at least a small fraction of his talent, first with the pianistic intimacy of "Lights In The Sky", then with the ambient haze of the long, captivating "Corona Radiata", a track that, together with the following "The Four Of Us Are Dying", confirms just how interesting the "Ghosts" project's developments could turn out to be.

After closing the Nine Inch Nails chapter, Reznor began working through some ideas with director David Fincher and his trusted partner Atticus Ross. The result of the Reznor-Ross duo's work is this majestic industrial-ambient portrait that is the soundtrack to The Social Network, very close in sound to the pair's previous collaboration, the instrumental Ghost I-IV, from which two of this work's nineteen tracks are in fact drawn ("Magnetic", a rearrangement of "14 Ghost II", and "A Familiar Taste", a remix of "35 Ghost IV").

The sonics, then, are those of latter-day Nine Inch Nails, less hard-rock in approach, but more geared toward sulfurous, dark ambient territory. Destruction, ataxia, suffering, grace and a touch of rage alternate across the record's 66 minutes, painting the picture of a satisfied admiration for the teeming life that, against all odds, still pulses beneath the rubble. The melodies are frozen, winding through an apocalyptic landscape, yet offering a certain comforting embrace, like the heartbeats of living forms peering out from hiding in the dark. Reznor and Ross achieve this effect both in their starker compositions (chief among them "In Motion", all 80s dance beats and synths, yet firmly anchored in the record's dark imagery, or the closing "Soft Trees Break The Fall") and when they push toward more expansive orchestrations, as in the extraordinary apocalyptic reimagining of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg's "In The Hall Of The Mountain King".

Good old Reznor must have found fresh inspiration in film music, encouraged by the success of the The Social Network score, which even won an Oscar. How else to explain the ability to produce, in under a year, as many as 39 tracks for a combined 3 hours of music in support of a film running just over two and a half hours?

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) offers three hours of melodies winding between vibrating tensions, deathly piano contemplations and increasingly rare outbursts of rage. Serving as the work's alpha and omega are the only two songs in the traditional sense of the term, both covers sung by female voices. "Immigrant Song", sung by Karen O, is what remains of the old Reznorian past. Powerful drumming beneath the scratchy voice of Miss Yeah Yeah Yeahs sketches an apocalyptic scenario that banishes any Zeppelin-esque echo, avoiding what could easily have slipped into trash. At the other end we find Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig, lending her sweet voice to a dark-electro rendition of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough?", drawn from the Reznor couple's project How To Destroy Angels.

Amid what will inevitably be the album's two export singles, an unusual sense of calm seems to settle over the darkness of the former (?) Nine Inch Nails man's world. A calm rippled by pitch-black waves that, however, never quite seem able to truly take over. Vibrant when the pace turns sulfurous, bordering on Ligeti-esque ("Perhelion", "A Pair Of Doves"), the duo's compositional talent explodes in the harsher tracks: irresistible, in this sense, are the relentless turmoil of "A Thousand Details", the swirling acidity of "An Itch" and the surprising tribal mechanics of "Oraculum".

Overall, it's a work ill-suited to conventional listening given its excessive length and almost dreamlike "formlessness", but in its grandeur it instills the kind of awe felt by someone standing before Michelangelo's Last Judgment: disoriented and enthralled.

Five years after The Slip, Trent Reznor announces the return of his main outfit on record for autumn 2013, along with the release, in the spring of that same year, of the debut full-length by his side project How To Destroy Angels, in which he's joined by his wife Mariqueen Maandig and Atticus Ross. The latter materializes as Welcome Oblivion, a collection of thirteen dark gems built from an obscure, unhealthy form of trip-hop with nervy undertones, closely akin in spirit to the sound of latter-day Portishead.

Barely five months later, the much-anticipated new Nine Inch Nails record also sees the light of day: Hesitation Marks (2013) first and foremost confirms the despotic nature of the brand, today more than ever a true team under the command of a Reznor more determined than ever to pursue his own personal path. A scratchy, grainy electronic sound dominates the scene; rage gives way to a complex interplay of chameleonic moods in the form of melodies and progressions, and this time there's really very little industrial about it. Present-day NIN kick things off with "Copy Of A", a literal, resigned acknowledgment of the inability to stand out in an increasingly, unfortunately uniform world, embodied by a gait more mechanical and unstoppable than ever, ahead of the equally splendid, searing agony of "Come Back Haunted", perhaps the only track to keep the bridges to the past intact.

Reznor then carves out detailed sculptures of caustic apocalypse, such as the quivering crescendo of "Disappointed", the alienated howl of "All Time Low" and the squared-off cage of "I Would For You", without resisting the occasional temptation to seek hopeful shelter. Representing the latter are the melodic, reflective interlude of "Find My Way", the almost prog ecstasy of "Everything" and the voracious, insatiable quest of "Various Methods Of Escape". That positivist effort turns to claustrophobia when Trent shuts himself away, dissecting his darkest, most clinging ghosts in the crackling self-analysis of "Satellite", ideally closed off by the breakneck flight of "Running". And while "In Two" is the illusory solution and perhaps also the weakest track of the bunch, it's the knowing electronic minimalism of "While I'm Still Here" that returns to the realism of the one true certainty — existing, despite everything — tackling the theme with detachment, confidence and a touch of veiled irony. And this is also the ultimate meaning of the album: Nine Inch Nails are still here, though they are, as is only right, the offspring of a man who hasn't been the "Mr. Self Destruct" some would still like to identify him with for years now. It would be pointless and misguided to still demand the energy and rancor that made their masterpieces so glorious (but which also weakened, when forced, the more recent chapters of their discography) — elements now anachronistic given the current direction of their sound.

Thanks to their exclusive collaboration with director David Fincher, Reznor and Atticus Ross have established themselves as the leading new duo in the art of the soundtrack, a genre that, since the early 2000s, has increasingly freed itself from its mere function as musical commentary to images. As Reznor and Ross themselves explain well, in the composing process for Fincher the music becomes part of the film's DNA, almost like an alternative screenplay, shaping its atmosphere even before individual scenes are shot. A measure of this was given by the mammoth result of the soundtrack for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", over three hours of score of staggering consistency and quality. An Oscar for their debut with The Social Network and a Golden Globe nomination for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo are fitting recognition of the remarkable work of these two musicians, now arriving at their third such effort.

Fincher's latest films continue to push the boundaries of the thriller genre, from the shadowy corners of Mark Zuckerberg's private life and legal affairs to the adaptation of Stieg Larsson's chilling Swedish best-seller. Judging purely by the listening experience, the adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel Gone Girl (released here as "L'amore bugiardo", out December 18th) seems to pursue an introspection that's more emotional than psychological, mirroring the plot's structure with devious developments and building its sonic framework through minimal additions. The opening unfolds in a space-ambient tone that's quiet and fairly reassuring, while "Sugar Storm" leans toward "Mysterious Skin", to stay within the realm of soundtracks. The director had in fact suggested the duo rework the atmosphere of modern spas, where everything seems to welcome you with open arms, but between the lines lingers a sense of unease about the fate of a humanity now adrift.

What emerges is a kind of concept on apparent calm, where post-industrial nerve-endings and muffled distortions creep in among the subcutaneous pulses of synths ("With Suspicion"), adding an almost constant note of tension and setting up the score's later developments. A musical plot that, from a relative stability, with unprecedented chamber-music glimpses ("Clue Two") and delicate piano arpeggios ("Just Like You", "Background Noise"), takes on shadows and ripples that bring back echoes of "Millennium" ("Clue One", "Something Disposable", "Still Gone") and the digital, Facebook-era anguish ("Secrets", "Perpetual"); the hypothetical peak of the climax lies around "Technically, Missing", marked by an insistent charge of electric guitars lurking behind the synthesizers.

Few but significant additions to the duo's expressive range, from the minimal-techno chill with Raime-like leanings of "The Way He Looks At Me" to the Badalamenti-esque melody of "Like Home", shot through with sinister feedback running against the grain; for the first time, the pair also work with a flesh-and-blood orchestra, forging fragments of great power such as "Consummation", where deep, heavy brass mixes with Reznor's static noise (it would have made a perfect grand finale).

Although there's no significant dip in quality or bite across more than 80 minutes, this soundtrack might prove less self-sufficient than its predecessors, or perhaps just (slightly) less inspired than one might reasonably expect from this celebrated new partnership.

The new Reznor is by now a composer who keeps proving, work after work, the greatness of his ever-evolving genius. But just when his violent streak seemed to have gradually slipped away over the years, perhaps also due to a newfound inner balance, along comes Not The Actual Events to call it all back into question, launching — once again alongside his trusty collaborator Atticus Ross — the first chapter of an EP trilogy with the most violent, brutal record heard since the days of Broken and The Downward Spiral.

Released in late December 2016, at a time distinctly unfavorable for making year-end charts and round-ups, the record is remarkably convincing, recapturing that old fury of their finest days. Worth noting is the funereal march of "She's Gone", which turned up months later in live form in one of the most memorable episodes of the new event-series season of "Twin Peaks" (confirming the bond between Reznor and director David Lynch).

Amid the dizzying speed of "Branches / Bones", the machine-gun guitar bursts of "The Idea Of You" and the pachydermic pounding of closer "Burning Bright (Field On Fire)", the naysayers claiming this EP was merely born to promote the band's contemporaneous deluxe reissues are literally torn to shreds, leaving fans in feverish anticipation for the follow-up to a work as essential (barely over 20 minutes) as it is praiseworthy.

The wait ends in July 2017 with Add Violence which, despite its title, doesn't stay true to its predecessor's brutal approach, leaning instead toward catchy, eighties-flavored melodies ("Less Than") and sinuous nods to the atmospheric tracks of The Downward Spiral and The Fragile ("The Lovers" and "This Isn't The Place"). While not quite at the thrilling heights of the trilogy's opening act — perhaps due to an excess of self-quotation — the record remains compelling and offers top-shelf gems like the trip-hop closer "The Background World". It's a generally accessible album that nonetheless confirms how much this new incarnation of Nine Inch Nails is benefiting from its new format, avoiding the kind of overstuffed platters where plenty of good ideas risked getting diluted among one too many fillers.

The trilogy finally comes to a close in June 2018, well past the end-of-2017 timeline originally projected. The reason, according to Reznor, lies in the decision to pivot toward a proper full-length christened Bad Witch. Despite its newly upgraded status, the runtime remains decidedly compact at just 31 minutes. Stylistically, though, the shift is sharp, delivering a bold album that's far less self-indulgent than the two excellent chapters before it.

"Bad Witch" is a work whose value must be appreciated as a whole, going beyond the sum of its parts. A journey through industrial and nu-jazz that feels like one long improvisation steeped in dark, toxic atmospheres, with a none-too-subtle tribute to the David Bowie of "Blackstar", his final act.

Trent Reznor, alongside his ever more trusted partner Atticus Ross, seems to have finally found the definitive formula for restoring and maintaining the NIN name at a level befitting its history, shedding some of the wordiness of the past in favor of a leaner, more concise approach — all without ever losing sight of the torment and violence inherent to their work.

Born as an “attempt not to go insane” in a world crushed by the Covid pandemic, quarantine and forced isolation, Ghosts V-VI is the gift Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross gave to fans at such a tragic point in history. A sprawling, two-and-a-half-hour journey of instrumental music, split into two parts, “Ghosts V – Together” and “Ghosts VI – Locusts”. “Together” turns decisively toward ambient territory of a clearly Eno-esque stamp, inviting listeners from the track titles onward to hang in there ("Letting Go While Holding On"). While the first chapter seems to trace an attempt at an optimistic approach to lockdown — an attempt to embrace one's own solitude, to rediscover one's deeper self and the silence lost amid daily frenzy — the second chapter abandons all optimism, giving way to a throbbing psychosis, the paranoia of forced isolation, the sudden appearance of an invisible cage that wasn't there just days before. "Locust" opens with the repeated piano note of "The Cursed Clock", a paranoid excursion into 20th-century pianism, as fascinating as it is unsettling. Next comes "Around Every Corner", even more claustrophobic and anguished, a looping piano figure reminiscent of Goblin's atmospheres, topped by a long synth drone that carries us from minimalism to the smoky, black jazz of the Dale Cooper Quartet, right up to an almost Branca-esque wall of sound that builds relentlessly before dissolving into an ambient finale.

When Disney has another go at it with the little-anticipated sequel to "Tron: Legacy", "Tron: Ares", it hands the score over to the celebrated Reznor/Ross duo, for a soundtrack credited (believe it or not) to Nine Inch Nails.

The third chapter of Disney's Tron franchise tells the story of Ares, "sent from the digital world to the real one on a dangerous mission", marking "humanity's first encounter with artificial intelligence beings", according to the words released during the official launch.

As is well known, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have scored more than a dozen films as a duo, including their recent work on Luca Guadagnino's films "Queer" and "Challengers", winning a Golden Globe for the latter. This time, though, things are different, as this marks their first film project credited as Nine Inch Nails.

The opening is magnetic, somewhat French touch and quite a lot John Carpenter. And indeed it's the horror maestro filmmaker and composer who serves as the main point of reference for the whole work, amid synths played with the stance of a mammoth, booming electro-clash restarts and plays of light that have always been part of the Reznor trademark too. "As Alive as You Need Me to Be" is in fact a Nine Inch Nails song with all the usual trademarks, but with a drop of "Derezzed" scattered here and there, a detail that confirms what was hinted at above. Then come, of course, the moments more strictly tied to the film itself, at times more relaxed (the tearful piano over ambient bounces of "Echoes", for instance) and at times more propulsive (the roughly four-on-the-floor kick of "This Changes Everything" and the synthetic, almost sinister bounce of "Infiltrator"). Amid this alternation of instrumentals crafted ad hoc for the screenplay, a few proper songs also pop up, like "I Know You Can Feel It", admirably noir but also watered down by some overused tricks, or the tearjerking "Who Wants To Live Forever?". Things work better, though, when Reznor stages, however vaguely, his industrial cabaret, as on "Target Identified".

Less epic than the orchestral behemoth cooked up back in the day by Daft Punk, Tron: Ares somehow manages to convince, precisely because it draws more heavily from the band's own original source. Reznor and co. didn't let themselves be seduced by the lure of a string-laced, glossy soundtrack, and instead carried straight on down their own path, littered with ghosts that always and inevitably recall good old Carpenter, going as far as to evoke a certain horror-movie theatricality in cues barely a minute long. Toward the end, "Shadow Over Me" pops up as a surprise, Reznor-esque to the core, and precisely for that reason the best of the bunch by a wide margin. Still, we're a long way from the glory days. And the suspicion that the Disney contract is really just a hook for an eggy tour (currently underway) and a bit of drawer-dusting never lets up for a second.

In 2026, recent collaborations with German producer Alexander Ridha (aka Boys Noize) launch into orbit a remix album focused exclusively on the project's danceable side; it's no coincidence that the tracks on the record rework several classic Nine Inch Nails compositions (including an old Soft Cell cover) in an electro-EBM key, yielding a more than satisfying result, if only for this fresh injection of energy capable of reshaping Trent Reznor's past through a different lens.

The product, rechristened for the occasion Nine Inch Noize and recorded both live and around various hotels and other improvised locations, comes to life during the performance at Coachella Festival 2026 and from a promotional campaign planned down to the smallest detail. The very same setlist performed on stage is replicated on the record in the same order, underscoring the uniqueness of a release inextricably tied to one specific event (and, by Reznor's own account, almost certainly a one-off).

Contributions by Marco Pagliariccio ("The Social Network", "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"), Matteo Meda ("Hesitation Marks"), Michele Palozzo ("Gone Girl") and Michele Bordi ("Not The Actual Events", "Add Violence", "Bad Witch"), Valerio D'Onofrio ("Ghosts V-VI"), Giuliano Delli Paoli ("Tron: Ares"), Paolo Chemnitz ("Nine Inch Noize")

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