NINE INCH NAILS - Nine Inch Noize

A new collaboration between Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize was on the cards, given that the two projects had already worked together on “Challengers [Mixed]” and, just a few months ago, on the soundtrack for “Tron: Ares”. This time, though, the Coachella stage turned this partnership into something far more dazzling: a show built to send the crowd into raptures, but also a chance to breathe new life into songs that seemed untouchable, like “Closer”, here recast in what's basically sexy-body-music form (whether you like it or not).

The album's tracklist (recorded, according to the two artists, somewhere between the stage, the studio, planes and hotel rooms!) follows the concert setlist exactly, as if we were looking at a remix album disguised as a live album, and vice versa. Because today, more than ever, (re)launching a sound carries more weight when it's backed by a show capable of narrating and contextualising it. Everything has been planned down to the smallest detail, right down to the viral campaign that accompanied the release of this event-record.

Trent Reznor has undoubtedly put his trust in the right man: it's no coincidence that Boys Noize (the German producer Alexander Ridha) had already tried his hand, with excellent results, at electronically rebuilding major tracks, remixing artists of the calibre of Depeche Mode, Tiga, Daf, Chemical Brothers, Pet Shop Boys and many others. The result is a record that entertains and, above all, knows how to get people dancing, even if it starts out rather unremarkably (“Vessel” and the following “She's Gone Away”). It's a work that then shifts into top gear thanks to a thoroughly pumped-up version of “Heresy” and the EBM delirium of “Parasite”, here stripped entirely of any industrial clangour (the track belongs to the How To Destroy Angels catalogue) in favour of a charge that's as synthetic as it is muscular.

While it should be noted that this Nine Inch Noize venture could easily have stayed confined to the realm of pure divertissement, the finished product is anything but an empty exercise: proof of this lies in the far-from-obvious reworkings of “The Warning” (the third track drawn from “Year Zero”) and “Memorabilia” (an old tribute to Soft Cell), the latter originally conceived by Reznor as an electro-industrial sledgehammer (it's a B-side released around the time of “Closer”) but here reshaped by Boys Noize through a technoid approach that's still faintly abrasive.

In 2026, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross still have plenty to say, but nothing left to prove - that much is certain. Still, only a future release under the Nine Inch Nails name will make things clearer. In the meantime, this album counts among those surprises you don't see coming, because a diversion isn't just capable of subverting every expectation, it can also turn out to be a real little gem, at least for the fans who follow every move of the project closely. Mission accomplished.

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23/04/2026