Don't expect new music from Industrial icons Nine Inch Nails anytime in the near future -- apparently, the landscape of music these days is just too bleak for the likes of their grinding guitars and broken electronics.
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Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has since transcended his angsty artistry far beyond his early days as music’s prettiest hate machine, adding GRAMMY and Academy Award-winning film composer to his list of accomplishments since arriving in the early ‘90s. But there’s still that old Trent in there, fans, telling host Rick Rubin on his Tetragrammaton podcast that he feels "the importance of music — or lack of importance of music — in today’s world, from my perspective, is a little defeating."
“In the context of Nine Inch Nails, in terms of an audience and the culture,” Reznor says, “music used to be the thing that, that was what I was doing when I had time. I was listening to music. I wasn’t doing it in the background while I was doing five other things, and I wasn’t treating it kind of as a disposable commodity.” (Disposable Commodity sounds like a great NIИ EP at least, Trent... Cmon!)
He adds, “I kind of miss the attention music got, I miss the critical attention that music got. Not that I am interested in the critic’s opinion, but to send something out in the world and feel like it touched places, might’ve got a negative or positive [review], but somebody heard it, it got validated in its own way culturally. Culturally, that feels askew. Like I can’t think of any review I care about today that I even trust. I could write it before it comes out because it’s already written. In fact, ChatGPT could probably do a better job, you know? Or is currently doing the job. That makes for what I feel is a less fertile environment to put music out into — in the world of Nine Inch Nails.”
His passion these days will continue to thrive in his film scores, it seems, as Trent explains, "I think that’s where some of the excitement of composition in film has thrust me into places I wouldn’t be with my band. It’s made me learn and be in awe of what music is, and how powerful it is, and how much there is to know about it, and how much I don’t know about it." Reznor says he's"in awe of seeing these different ways it can affect you emotionally, and techniques and sound and soundscapes and things I don’t think I would’ve come across on the typical trajectory of being in a band."
Also, now a 58-year-old father of five, he adds, “I don’t want to be away from my kids. I don’t want to miss their lives to go do a thing that I’m grateful to be able to do, and I’m appreciative that you’re here to see it, but I’ve done it a lot, you know?”
Listen to the full discussion above -- plus, check out Nine Inch Nails Radio and more on the free Audacy app.