Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails was one of the most important projects of the 1990s. At first it was simply considered one of the most relevant acts of industrial music, but within a few years its influence extended far beyond that assumption and Nine Inch Nails became one of the fundamental experiences in all of rock music history.

The brain behind the project was Trent Reznor, originally from Pennsylvania, who moved to Cleveland (Ohio), where he had played in some minor bands, including Slam Bam Boo and Chris Vrenna's Exotic Birds.

Nine Inch Nails caused a sensation for both the music and the lyrics. Reznor imposed a perfect combination of art and life that resonated with the mood of his generation, just as Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison did in the 1960s. With Nine Inch Nails, a character was born that was a cross between Dostoevsky's "demons" and Goethe's young Werther, between Nietzsche's superman and De Sade's perverts. The tragedy was accompanied by notes that summed up ten years of apocalypse-soundtracks (from Throbbing Gristle and Pere Ubu to Fetus and Ministry), but filtered through a new sound technology, the technology of the computer age. Reznor changed the face of the rock group once and for all: the group was him, singer and arranger, messiah and orchestra.

Featuring a personality as brutal as Fetus's but with more humane melodies, Ministry dances and electronic arrangements, the album Pretty Hate Machine (TVT, 1989) was a record-breaking event. The nihilistic lyrics and the claustrophobic atmospheres made it something more: a sort of manifesto / diary of an entire generation. What Reznor excels at is precisely in making music the ferocity, the anger, the spirit of rebellion that permeate these hatreds to the alienation of teenagers. The neurotic atmospheres of Terrible Liethey recall Peter Gabriel's more leaden techno-funk songs. Reznor's expressionism is born here, from these disconnected phrases (first whispered and then screamed), from these violent metallic syncopes, from these whipping of staccato keyboards, from these chilling shrouds of electronics. The jumbled polyrhythms of Kinda I Want To are on the same level as a post-Gabriel pop, with the addition of punk-rock guitars. Reznor communicates the same visceral fear also through a rap, Down In It , always in his cannibal way.
Summit of the work is Head Like A Hole, which is basically a very bad rhythm and blues sung with satanic enthusiasm and propelled by a pressing electronic beat. In this song the debts towards the decadent synth-pop idi Billy Idol are more evident. And synth-pop are also, basically, Sin's symphonic progressions and Ringfinger's closing ballet .
The tension remains on the verge of homicidal psychosis even in the calmest songs: in the feverish shuffle of Sanctified , recited subdued but full of anguish, and in the even more nuanced recital of Something I Can Never Have , a desperate ballad immersed in a disfigured landscape by metallurgical noises and drained by long pauses of distant rumble, in the grotesquely warped funk ofThe Only Time (one of the few songs where music prevails over voice).
Compared to his "industrial" colleagues, Reznor was above all able to sing, and used his voice with all its terrifying power. Reznor was the first great singer of industrial music.
The instrumental scores prepare the ground for the singing show. Reznor is not afraid to compose non-linear music, in which the refrain is missing, in which the rhythms are crushed when they should be pressed or in which there are no melodic instruments. Reznor isn't afraid to leave his voice alone to gasp in a bush of thorny rhythms.

When Ministry swerved towards speed metal, Reznor followed them: on the EP Broken (TVT, 1992) the synths are pushed into the background, and in their place appears a platoon of catastrophic sounding guitars. The EP explodes with the thumping distortions of Wish , to then dive into the electronic lava torrents of Happiness In Slavery (the song most similar to the sound of the debut, and a club hit) and end in the arms of the supersonic thrash of Gave Up. They are three of the best songs in the genre. Everything (including the cloying nihilism of the lyrics) is designed to look for the "effect" at all costs, so the final result doesn't sound very spontaneous; but Reznor still manages to ride the heavymetal tiger better than Jourgensen did the same year. (The following year Reznor will release Fixed , a series of instrumental remixes of this EP, in which the sound is more electronic and less heavymetal).

Reznor fine-tuned his musical / existential blend on the album The Downward Spiral (TVT, 1994), undeniably Nine Inch Nails' grand masterpiece. The level of introspection becomes manic, and the power of the music is all a function of the psychodrama of the lyrics. The songs initially sink into devastating visions of the past (each song being a sudden glow that illuminates a memory) and then (beginning with The Becoming) make up a progression, almost an Calvary, towards Hurt's final agony.
The grim and rousing violence of Mr Self Distruct and the frightening voodoobilly of Big Man With A Gun (one of its vertices), that anthem of stubborn nihilism that is Heresy, the swear words shouted here and there with that tone of a sexual maniac as well as serial murderer, the locomotive cadences always in the foreground, the distortions by high voltage wires struck by lightning, they are placed at the service of a form of "industrial poem" which is the analogue of the symphonic poem, an attempt to describe facts and events, to tell stories in music, and as such they the same "appeal" on the cyberpunk public that Liszt's symphonic poems had on young bohemians of the late nineteenth century.
In their pantomimes, the zeitgeist of the 90s is paraphrased. Eraser, perhaps the record's dramatic climax, simulates a machine begging its builder to "Hate me / smash me / erase me / kill me". It is the quintessence of expressionism in music. The Downward Spiral, the penultimate cut, isn't even music, it's pure claustrophobia. The Becoming is an enormous Bosch-worthy fresco, an orgy of the damned rendered by a crowded score, teeming with dissonances.
Reptile, whose "Wagnerian" shocks of intensity represent its alter ego, sets to music the "Flowers of Evil" of the industrial generation: "Oh my precious whore / my disease my infection / I'm so impure".
The spleen of cyberpunk arises precisely from a fusion of self-compassion, self-disgust and self-satisfaction that is perfectly realized in these musical texts. March of The Pigs' robotic and panzer gait at the same time is the most vulgar and perverse the nineties has ever conceived: a succession of TNT charges that continue the frightening ritual of Wish (with perhaps a trace of Ballroom Blitz by Sweet). All the fantasy-criminal imagery created over the years by films such as "Terminator" and by Gibson's books finds in this record its sublimation in sounds.
Delusions on the sly like Piggy they live in a more subterranean tension, but no less unnerving, entrusted to disjointed rhythms, disturbing whispers, haggard dissonances. Reznor also tries to ape Prince in Closer's languid obscene chant ("I Want to fuck you like an Animal"), which is paradoxically also the most melodic track on the record.
From the pompous atmospheres of Ruiner, reminiscent (mutatis mutandis) of art-rock and the early King Crimson (with a guitar solo that is in fact a tribute to Hendrix), to the funereal instrumental of A Warm Place, reminiscent, momentarily of Moody Blues, Reznor does nothing short of de-constructing styles and practices of rock music and reconstructing them in an "industrial" form. "Your god is dead and no one cares / if there is hell, I’ll See You there" Heresy.

Far from being just an isolated artist, Reznor was also a music industry histrionist, capable of creating a spasmodic anticipation around each of his releases. The Downward Spiral was not only a masterpiece of industrial music, but also the album that managed to bring industrial music to the charts.

Further Down The Spiral (Interscope, 1994) is a remix album that adds some classy ideas to the major work. If only the explosive and tribal Piggy and the rousing heavy metal guitarism of Eraser (Denial) are consistent with his most famous style, the industrial symphony of The Art of Self Destruction Part One reveals an avant-garde composer as brutal as it is refined. ; the overwhelming polyrhythms of Self Destruction Final and the fusion of techno and cosmic music of The Downward Spiral open new horizons to its infernal chemistry.

Collaborator Chris Vrenna (who had been one of the founding members) leaves Reznor and launches a project with Clint Walsh, Tweaker, which will publish The Attraction To All Things Uncertain (Six Degrees, 2001). 2 AM Wake Up Call (Music, 2004).

After a series of sold out concerts that consecrate his image as anti-star and the single The Perfect Drug (Nothing, 1997), Reznor moved to New Orleans and devoted his time to film soundtracks ("Natural Born Killers" and "Lost Highway ") and production work.

After a long period of silence, Reznor was expected to save rock and roll from the dozens of Nine Inch Nails pale imitations that roamed the airwaves, was expected to deliver some definitive statement about art and life. What happened, instead, is that Reznor retreated towards a simpler format, albeit using the same tools (psychotic screaming, killer synths, metallic percussions, brutal distortions). The double album Fragile (Interscope, 1999) picks up from Spiral's last track, Hurt, but hardly matches the masterpiece's ferocious prodigy. Reznor shows that he is not interested in angst for the sake of angst and cares more for meditation on his own angst; that he is not indulging in insanity but merely puzzled by it. The album is, in fact, largely autobiographic, the title being a dedication to himself, the industrial ripper who has realized his inherent fragility, his deep need to fill the void he had created around himself.
While the melodic, disturbing bombast (a` la Nirvana) of We're In This Together, Somewhat Damaged's machine-gun rhythm-box and bass loop, and the driving progression and singalong refrain (a` la Smashing Pumpkins) of Please are the clear attention-grabbers, it is the emotional black holes that betray flashes of Reznor's soul as it is burning, such as the virulent riff of The Wretched, attacked by alien frequencies over haunting piano notes; or the evil deflagration of Starfuckers Inc over a swamp of syncopated polyrhythms; or the eerie lament in the killing fields of Underneath it all.
All the instrumentals fall in the latter category: the terrifying chaotic/cacophonous orgy of Just Like You Imagined, that sounds like a peek into another world, the grotesque "danse macabre" of Pilgrimage; the ambient chamber music of La Mer, rising and ebbing; the futuristic blues of The Mark Has Been Made; the closing, subdued, cryptic sonata Ripe.
Two discs may be two much for what Reznor has to say at this point in his career/life. Occasionally too emphatic (The Day the World Went Away, The Way Out is Through, The Fragile), occasionally too friendly to the new fads (Even Deeper illustrates his version of trip-hop, No You Don't flirts with radio-friendly industrial music a` la Gravity Kills, a funky bass line turns Into the Void into a robotic version of Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue, Where is Everybody raps a bit), occasionally even pathetic (The Great Below), Reznor is more than ever a titanic hero, but not an infallible one.

Things Fall Apart (Nothing, 2000) are remixes from Fragile.

And All That Could Have Been (Nothing, 2001) is a live concert.

Having lost the rage, Reznor decided to focus on the sound of his machines for With Teeth (Interscope, 2005). All the Love in the World, Only, the closing ballad Right Where It Belongs and (gasp) the dance-rock novelty The Hand That Feeds are hardly what one expects from the master of paranoia. Maybe You Know What You Are and The Line Begins to Blur were meant as the psychopathic punches of the album, but they sound harmless like a deadly missile exhibited at a museum of old military technology. His voice sits uncomfortably in the front of the mix, and his lyrics In an age in which even Brian Wilson is hailed as a genius, Reznor probably felt that he had no choice but to submit to the dumbness of his contemporaries. At least he did it with no grace, no elegance and no common sense. Maybe this awkward set of songs is simply his way to say "may rock critics rot".

Year Zero (Interscope, 2007) eviscerates the fundamental contradiction of Reznor's art: between its apocalyptic sound and his introverted persona. The bigger the sound, the more fragile the ego; and viceversa. Reznor has created one of the most influential characters of the turn of the century: the little everyman who is alienated by the giant establishment, and responds with the post-industrial equivalent of an expressionist scream. The storyline seems to deal with a pessimistic futuristic scenario ("seems" because Reznor hid it on purpose calling on the listeners to discover it via a sort of treasure hunt throughout the Internet), but the music is quintessentially turn of the century, i.e. paranoid, claustrophobic and... polemic (the story is a not-so-veiled criticism of George W Bush's "war on terror"). Reznor spends too much time telling the story, something that he has never been good at, as opposed to simply creating the psychological context that would make the storytelling irrelevant. The catchy Survivalism, the anthemic The Beginning of the End, Vessel, God Given, The Greater Good would make a terrific EP. Alas, a handful of inferior tracks make it a mediocre album.
Reznor's industrial music was never a well-defined genre: it was merely a label for heavily-arranged post-guitar rock music when sound-sculpting becomes mood-sculpting. Originally, the "mood" was the rage of the punk age. In 2007 that rage has turned into mere disgust.

The all-instrumental double-disc Ghosts I-IV (Halo Twenty Six, 2008) disappointed because the 36 untitled pieces sounds like 36 second-hand ideas by someone who had grown up during the new wave and the post-rock age, but is not capable of venturing beyond. It is Brian Eno without any oblique strategy.

Reznor's dystopian aesthetic of the fragile versus the demonic has decayed on The Slip (Null, 2008) to a state of somnambulant grieving that expresses itself in Lights in the Sky, 999,999, the fake disco-music of Discipline, the suicidal neurosis of 1,000,000. The old ferocity is gone forever, though, replaced by the fatalistic mood of the layered instrumental Corona Radiata and the gloomy meditation of The Four of Us Are Dying. Significant contributions to the sound of the album came from keyboardist Alessandro Cortini and drummer Josh Freese. Overall, though, these albums signaled a dramatic collapse in artistic inspiration.

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (2008) was a collaboration with rapper Saul Williams.

Reznor then turned to movie soundtracks, notably for David Fincher's films The Social Network (2010) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011).

Nine Inch Nails' next album, Hesitation Marks (Columbia, 2013), hit another low in his artistic career, with embarrassing half-baked poppy ditties like Came Back Haunted and Everything, a funk-soul ballad like All Time Low, an evocation of vintage synth-pop like Satellite, and worse. There is little that can be salvaged: the techno dirge Satellite, and a disco-pop imitation, Copy of A, reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk

Reznor composed a bleak trilogy with the subsequent EPs: the five-song Not The Actual Events (2016), containing the eerie She's Gone and the slow-motion doom-metal of Burning Bright ; the five-song Add Violence (2017), much more self-indulgent (especially in the eight minutes of distorted electronic loops that procrastinate the end of The Background World); and the six-song Bad Witch (2018), billed as a full-length album but actually only 30-minutes long, and containing the gloomy Play the Goddamned Part (on which Reznor plays dissonant saxophone) and the eight-minute Over and Out. If compiled all together, these three EPs would make for a 16-song album, but it would be his worst album ever, a few interesting ideas diluted in a sea of filler.

Reznor released two more "ghost" albums: Ghosts V: Together (2020) of ambient, meditative music, and Ghosts VI: Locusts (2020) of dissonant industrial music.

His most successful soundtrack was a collaboration with Atticus Ross for the Disney-Pixar film Soul (2020).