Featured Artist #26: Nine Inch Nails

[repcak]

Nine Inch Nails

= Industrial, electronic, alternative, heavy metal, rock, synth pop;

Members:
Trent Reznor: keyboard, singer, guitar, synthesizer – he is the only official member and head of NIN.

Members ‘with_teeth’-tour: (the members are changing from record to record, from tour to tour)
Aaron North – guitar
Jeordie White – bass
Jerome Dillon – drums
Alessandro Cortini - Keyboard


Biography: birth, childhood, life until the release of his first album

Nine Inch Nails is a one-man-band formed by Trent Reznor. Nine Inch Nails starts and ends with Trent Reznor and therefore you have to know Trent Reznor to understand Nine Inch Nails. In short: Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor.

Michael Trent Reznor was born at 7:30 in the morning of May 17th, 1965 in Mercer, Pennsylvania, a small farming town with a population of about 2,500, in the state’s northwest corner. Mike Reznor, his dad, worked as a commercial artist and interior designer when he married Nancy Clark. They were both in their teens, not long before Trent’s birth. Michael Trent Reznor was called by his middle name, because there was already one Michael in the family. His parents broke soon after his sister Tera was born in 1971. After that, Trent lived with his grandparents, while his sister stayed with her mum. Like every child on earth who has to cope with divorced parents, Trent too suffered a lot from the divorce. This leads to his self-hatred and the feeling of being a misfit later on.

He soon started to take piano lessons. This was very important for him, because he was always shy, felt uncomfortable when people were around, but the music helped him
feel better. Through music he found a way to express his feelings and to get the satisfaction that he is good at doing something. At high-school he even played prominent roles –although he was very shy - in productions of Jesus Christ Superstar (Judas) and The Music Man (Professor Harold Hill). Therefore he was voted for “Best in Drama” by his classmates.

The relationship between him and his father was very healthy. He had a major influence on young Trent because he provided little artistic inspiration in the form of a guitar and stuff like that. While growing up, he started to hate his home town more and more. Trent awaited the chance to leave, because he felt isolated from the outside world which he longed to see. The world outside, he got to know only through comics, television, movies and MTV.

Reznor caught up attention by anything extreme. Movies that scared him, like The Exorcist he had seen while he was eleven, or scary comic books. But the band Kiss changed his world for ever. It seemed evil and scary for him. So he decided to make music on his own. His Dad bought him an electric piano and in the back room of the little music store, where his dad sold instruments, he started ,with a couple of other guys, jamming in terrible garage bands. Soon he started to take lessons for the guiter, but never became good at it.

He graduated from Mercer High in 1983 and went at the Allegheny College, about ninety miles north of Pittsburgh, where he studied music and computer engineering and tried - unsuccessfully - to fit in socially. Once he said in an interview: “No one in my family ever finished school. I thought, okay, in hight school I was a ****in’ loser, I didn’t fit in. So I thought in college I’m going to make some friends, try to fit in. But I was banished instantly. I felt like a misfit.” Now eighteen-year-old he was still working with local groups, who covered MTV music as U2, Billy Idol and Tears of Fears. He experimented a lot with his keyboard, wrote songs and did gigs. His music was more melodic and less technological, because he hadn’t discovered industrial music yet. By the end of his first year at Allegheny, Trent had decided to put his academic efforts on the back burner, in order to focus on his musical career, because he put all his creative energies into the music and the music began to overtake the studies. Toward the end of that year, and during the second year of his college, he was doing three shows a week and was travelling a lot back and forth. Therefore he had to make a choice between college and music, because he wasn’t able to study and to make shows at once. So he decided to leave Allegheny and tried to get a job in a studio somewhere.

Trent moved to Cleveland, because the band Exotic Birds, he was playing in, was playing there a lot. There he got a job in a music store with all the high-tech synthesizer that were coming out. During this time he realized, that there is a lot of music he never heard before. He started to hear industrial bands (so named because their mechanized beats echoed the din of heavy industry) like, Ministry and Skinny Puppy. He got influenced a lot by these bands and he was finding himself less and less interested in playing other people’s music and quit Exotic Birds. He signed on as an assistant at a local studio called Right Track, where he worked his way up to an engineer. This gave him the opportunity to get known with all the machinery and computer applications he would need to reproduce the sounds that he was hearing in his head. After some time the owner of Right Track gave him studio access to work on his own material during off-hours, because he was so impressed with Reznor’s talent.

Reznor assembled a distinctive arsenal of noises and rhythms that suited the emotions his songs were exploring, mixing electronics with electric guitar. He put something together, thought about it, refined it, went back in and did it again. At this time Trent Reznor was a one-man band, who made every single sound with the help of a computer. Even today he is a one-man band and only on tours he had band members who play the instruments he first makes on the computer [His last record ‘With Teeth’ is the only exception so far]. But he has problems with lyrics. He didn’t know what to sing. After some experimenting he realized that the only thing he could sing about, were his own personal experiencies, feelings, relationships and religion. His songs are an insight into his most intimate and personal feelings and his self-hatred.

He made some Demos and gave the tape John A. Malm Jr., a young veteran of the Cleveland scene who had managed several local bands. He was very impressed by this tape on which he could hear only three songs. Malm sent the demos to ten labels and they were so
impressed by it, that they got eight responses, even from Wax Trax! the label from Ministry and Skinny Puppy. Reznor was approached by TVT Records, a small New York label, which owner and founder was Steve Gottlieb. Meanwhile Trent was working on more songs for his first release.

The first song he completed was Down In It, the first song from his debut album Pretty Hate Machine, he released 1989. The single reached the Number One slot on Rolling Stone’s dance chart and placing in the Top 20 of Billboard’s Top 20 club chart. His one-man band he called Nine Inch Nails. Another song from the album, Head Like a Hole, was one of the most requested songs at the time and made Trent a star. Pretty Hate Machine became the first “industrial” album which was sold million times and got platinum in 1991.

Until this time Trent was still a one-man band and when he had to go on tour, he had a real problem because all the sound he made, were coming from the computer. He couldn’t play all the songs alone and he didn’t want to go on tour alone. So he decided to recruit some impressive musicians from the Cleveland scene, gave them the songs and showed them their parts, which they had to learn. In the end there were a real drum, a keyboard and some guitars on the stage playing the songs and the electronic part came out of the computer.

Note: In the words of Trent : I don't know if you've ever tried to think of band names, but usually you think you have a great one and you look at it the next day and it's stupid. I had about 200 of those. Nine inch nails lasted the two-week test, looked great in print, and could be abbreviated easily. It really doesn't have any literal meaning. It seemed kind of frightening. It's a curse trying to come up with band names.

[repcak]

Major releases:
Note: The Halo numbers appear on every official NIN release. It appears to be just a numbering system to keep the CDs in order.


Pretty Hate Machine (LP) - HALO 2:
released October 1989
1. Head like a hole
2. Terrible lie
3. Down in it
4. Sanctified
5. Something I can never have
6. Kinda I want to
7. Sin
8. That’s what I get
9. The only time
10. Ringfinger

This album is full with industrial rock blasts, elements of pop and electronic music that helps stand out against many industrial albums of the past. The older industry albums tended to go more experimental and were against traditional standards of pop songwriting structures. Trent Reznor used the traditional pop elements in his debut album to show that an industrial can have the same elements as a rock or pop album. The single Head Like A Hole is one of the greatest alternative rock songs of all-time and another song is Something I Can Never Have that is driven by its melancholy piano. It can also be found on the Soundtrack to Natural Born Killers, that was produced by Trent Reznor. Pretty Hate Machine containes more pop elements than the later NIN albums. Today, the album sold two million albums in the U.S. so far.

Recommended songs:
Head Like a Hole
Terrible lie
Down in it
Something I Can Never Have
Sin

Broken (EP) - HALO 5:
released spring 1992
1. Pinion
2. Wish
3. Last
4. Help me I am in hell
5. Happiness in Slavery
6. Gave up
7. Physical (You’re So)
8. Suck

The second major Nine Inch Nails release was Broken, an EP of six tracks and two hidden tracks (it wasn’t a “real” album at all; it was more a “minialbum”). The song Wish won a Grammy, ironically enough, in the Best metal Performance. The music video for Happiness In Slavery was banned, because it was too brutal for TV. In the video you could see a man who tied himself to a machine that rapes and kills him [This video you can download on his official website: [URL=www.nin.com]www.nin.com[/url]. A full length video entitled 'Broken - The Movie' was also made, but never released.
The reason why this album got so harsh is the the fact that during the long tour for his debut album the songs became more aggressive when played by a band live with real instruments (than it was before: one man with his computer) and that things often turned violent and horrible on stage as a result of everyone releasing frustration and anger on their instruments.
When recording Broken Trent wanted to make the most aggressive and brutal album he is able to make. The results were louder mixes and more distortion.
On the song Physical Reznor whispers the lyrics “Eat your heart out, Steve” referring to Steve Gottlieb, the owner and profounder of TVT Records, who tried to push the band down to a more commercial path than Reznor had wanted.

Recommended songs:
Help me I am in hell
Happiness in Slavery
Gave up
Suck

The Downward Spiral (LP) - HALO 8:
released March 1994
1. Mr. Sef Destruct
2. Piggy
3. Heresy
4. March of the pigs
5. Closer
6. Ruiner
7. The Becoming
8. I do not want this
9. Big man with a gun
10. A warm place
11. Eraser
12. Reptile
13. The Downward spiral
14. Hurt

After Broken he wanted to start right away on a real album. He already had a concept in mind and he wanted to release his second album in 1993. He had this timetable to finish his work in 1993 and this was his mistake because he just wanted to get it done. Therefore he talked a lot to Rick Rubin (who is a good friend of Trent and was producer of bands like Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Johnny Cash, Beasty Boys and many more) and told him about his motivation to complete the record: “Just to get it done.”. Rick answered: “That’s the stupidest ****ing reason for doing an album I’ve heard. Don’t do it.” He started thinking about it and realized he was right.
So he decided to rent a house in L.A. to make his second album. He looked about fifteen houses in one day and he knew only that one of these houses was that one, where Sharon Tate and four friends were murdered by members of Charles Manson in 1969. The house is calling ‘Tate house’ or ‘LePig’ (because the murders wrote the word pig on the outside of the house with the blood of the killed ones.). But he had bad luck and of the fifteen houses, he accidentally choosed the Tate house.

The Downward Spiral was Nine Inch Nails second album and his first concept album [to read a review about TDS I recommend the one by Med57 on Sputnikmusic.com: [URL=http://www.musicianforums.com/sputnik/album.php?reviewid=3312&genreid=18]Link[/url] - I couldn’t do it better]. Through the second single from the album, Closer, he got more famous and this single is the most known of NIN. The first single from the album was March of the Pigs. Music videos were made for both singles, but the video for Closer being edited for MTV, by replacing the censored scenes with a slide which stated simply "Scene Missing", to reflect the censorship. The album's final track, Hurt, got quite successful when covered by Johnny Cash in 2003. Other songs from this album are Piggy and March of the Pigs. Many people think that he wrote the songs because he lived for a while in the LePig house, but it isn’t true. Trent said: “ I had the song ‘Piggy’ written long before it was ever known that I would be in that house.’March of the Pigs’ has nothing to do with the Tate murders or anything like that. I’m not going to say what it is about, but it’s not about that.”
The Downward Spiral powerfully evokes images of both aggressive and depressive states (Reznor has publicly stated that he has suffered from depression), and many people find it unlistenable. Other consider it to be Trent Reznor’s finest work.

Recommended songs:
Mr. Selfdestruct
Piggy
Heresy
March of the pigs
Closer
The Becoming
A Warm Place
The Downward Spiral
Hurt

[repcak]

The Fragile (LP) - HALO 14:
released September 1999
CD1:
1. Somewhat damaged
2. The Day the world went away
3. The frail
4. The wretched
5. We’re in this together
6. The fragile
7. Just like you imagined
8. Even deeper
9. Pilgrimage
10. No, you don’t
11. La mer
12. The great below
CD2:
1. The Way out is through
2. Into the Void
3. Where is everybody
4. The mark has been made
5. Please
6. Star****ers Inc.
7. Complication
8. I’m looking forward to joining you, finally
9. The big come down
10. Underneath it all
11. Ripe (with decay)

It is considered to be his 4th major release, but it is his 3rd album and has been released by Interscope Records. Through the time since his last album he worked a lot with other arists like David Bowie, Marilyn Manson and David Lynch.
The sound remains the same as in the last album. It is less clean, less polished, the atmosphere is dark and tortured and it has a lot of instrumental songs. A lot of NIN fans mean that The Fragile is even better than The Downward Spiral and the best work he had ever done, though it hasn’t any good singles (except Star****ers Inc.) and hadn’t won any awards.

Recommended songs:
Somewhat damaged
The day the world went away
The Wretched
We’re in this together
Into the void
Star****ers. Inc.


Still (EP)/And all that could have been… (Live) – HALO 17:
Released 2002
And all that could have been…(Live):
1. Terrible Lie
2. Sin
3. March of the pigs
4. Piggy
5. The Frail
6. The wretched
7. Gave up
8. The great below
9. The mark has been made
10. Wish
11. Suck
12. Closer
13. Head Like a hole
14. The day the world went away
15. Star****ers Inc.
16. Hurt

Still:
1. Something I Can never have
2. Adrift and at peace
3. The Fragile
4. The Becoming
5. Gone, Still
6. The Day the world went away
7. And all that could have been
8. The persistance of loss
9. Leaving Hope

The Still record was released (in a limited edition) together with the Live-album ‘And all that could have been…’ (it’s called Halo 17 too). Afterwards the Still album was (once again in limited edition) available through the nin-website [URL=www.nin.com/still]www.nin.com/still[/url] . It soon was sold out and many fans asked Trent Reznor if he will release the record once again. With the release of the ‘With Teeth’ Trent Reznor released the ‘Still’ album once again. You can order it through his official website – be aware: once again limited edition! [I am one of the happy ones, cause my sister bought the limited live-cd, which consist ‘Still’ ]
The record consists of 5 remixes of old songs and 4 instrumentals. It’s a a very calm and pleasant compilation.

Recommended songs:
Adrift and at peace
Gone, Still
Leaving hope


With Teeth (LP) – HALO 19:
Released May 2005
1. All the love in the world
2. You know what you are?
3. The collector
4. The hand that feeds
5. Love is not enough
6. Every day is exactly the same
7. With teeth
8. Only
9. Getting smaller
10. Sunspots
11. The line begins to blur
12. Beside you in time
13. Right where it belongs
14. Home

With Teeth is Trent Reznor 4th major release. At first it had to be named ‘Bleed Through’ but in November 2004 he changed the Name into ‘With Teeth’. It’s more song/lyric-oriented than The Fragile and it’s his first album he recorded being clean for 5years. After The Fragile-tour he was heavily addicted to drugs, alcohol and had serious mentally problems; therefore he went to a rehabilitation clinic to get clean. That’s the reason how the album (lyrically) got so optimistic. It descripes his way from his depressive state and addiction to his recovery. The first single (The hand that feeds) was released in may 2005 and the second single (Only) in july 2005.

Recommended songs:
All the love in the world
The hand that feeds
Every day is exactly the same
Only
Beside you in time
Right where it belongs

[repcak]

His work (with others):

Nothing Records:
After The Downward Spiral Trent Reznor quit the work with TVT Records and made a deal with Interscope Records. Through the deal Trent and his his friend Malm were able to have their own record, called Nothing Records. Though the idea of this label was born in 1992, they officially opened it in the beginning of 1994.
The fundemental goal of Nothing Records was to give artists a greater degree of control over their own work, what Trent hadn’t at the beginning of his career (remember Steve Gottlieb, who tried to push the band down to a more commercial path than Reznor had wanted). Trent said: “If you sign somebody because they’re a creative person, then let them do what they do instead of trying to change or mutate them. If they want our help, we’re more than happy to give it. If they don’t, we’re more than happy to stand back and let them do their thing.”
The Label is still small enough to be manageable.
The artists they signed are: Marilyn Manson, Autechre, The Bowling Green, Plaid, Plug, Pop Will Eat Itself, Prick, Squarepusher, 12 Rounds, and The The. Most known of them is Marilyn Manson.

Marilyn Manson:
Marilyn Manson first met Trent during an interview for a music magazine that Manson worked for. Trent asked Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids to open for him for a few shows. They jumped at the opportunity. After it, Trent signed them into his label and produced Marilyn Manson’s first album Portrait of An American Family and his second album Antichrist Superstar. He was even co-writing Antichrist Superstar and on some songs you can hear Trent Reznor’s voice in the background.
When NIN once were playing in the Madison Square Gardens, Marilyn Manson came on the stage during the song Star****ers. inc. and they start singing together. After this song they played The Beautiful People, which is a song by Marilyn Manson (you can download both videos from www.nin.com).

Natural Born Killers:
Oliver Stone (who was the director of Natural Born Killers) heard Nine Inch Nail's Something I Can Never Have, and decied that someday, somehow, he would get Trent Reznor to work on the soundtracks for one of his movies. When it came time to do Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone contacted Trent. Trent wrote the song Burn for the movie, as well as producing the soundtrack itself. In the course of producing the soundtrack, he watched the movie fifty times to get the full effect. The Soundtrack includes Burn, Something I Can Never Have (remix) and A Warm Place, of NIN. That soundtrack is now recognised as one of the greatest of all time. As well as containing excellent music, because it is creating the right atmosphere.

Other soundtracks he was involved:

· Lost Highway by David Lynch: Trent wrote The Perfect Drug for this soundtrack. Trent was also heavily involved in this soundtrack, as he was with the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Two more songs were credited to Trent: Driver Down and Videodrones; Questions.
· The Crow: For this soundtrack Trent Reznor covered Dead Souls by Joy Division.

David Bowie:
David Bowie's late seventies recordings greatly influenced Trent, especially the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger. Bowie invited NIN 1995 to be the opening act of his Outside tour. Now Trent had the possibility to work with his idol. In the end of the main act of David Bowie, they were even sharing the stage for five songs. David Bowie dressed whole in white, sang, and Trent Reznor dressed in black played the keyboard.
Trent remixed the song The Heart's Filthy Lesson on Bowie's record Outside.

Other artists he worked with:

· Tori Amos: Tori and Trent share a mutual respect for each others work and Tori asked Trent to do backing vocals for a song on Under the Pink, from her album Past the Mission. He provides backing vocals for the chorus, and gives the song a great texture and fullness.
However, Trent doesn’t appear in the video.
· Quake: Because Trent liked the ID-Software’s game Doom a lot, he was asked by John Carmack (Lead-programmer of ID-Software) to make the music for Quake, a dark first-person shooter.

Links about NIN and Trent Reznor:

www.nin.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Reznor
http://www.angelfire.com/band/nintrent/
http://www.nothingrecords.com/
http://www.9inchnails.com/
http://www.burningsouls.com/
http://www.thefragile.com/

If you want to discuss NIN/Trent Reznor, check out the NIN-thread:
[URL=http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=302466&page=1&pp=25]Link[/url]

[Rothmans]

First post and I am suprised these havnt been done earlier.

[GenuineImitation]

They are a really good band. Reznor is amazing. I still have to get "With Teeth" though.
Good write up, alot of information.

[heavy metal kid]

great write up, i love NIN.

I know "Hurt" got bigger when Cash cover it, but the live version of the song is awesome, specially when is the last song on the setlist; still, Reznor song have more pontential.

[Shadows]

Incredible writeup. I love NIN beyond all comprehension.

I've actually just pulled out my NIN CD's after a long while. The Fragile is one of my all-time favorite music albums. IT has the very dark and heavy tracks (Starf*ckers, Inc, Somewhat Damaged, No You Don't) but it also has some of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard (The Frail, The Fragile, We're In This Together, La Mer, The Great Below, The Mark Has Been Made). The instrumentals are amazing. I prefer disc 1 overall, but disc 2 isn't without it's charm.

Trent has also put out consistently good stuff. I love With Teeth, and I've been wearing my With Teeth shirt lately. It has great catchy, dancable tracks and isn't quite as dark as past work. The Downward Spiral has more classic stuff, and is probably the heaviest NIN album. My least favorite is Pretty Hate Machine, but it still has some ver memorable stuff. I would say it's the most "Industrial" out of all NIN albums.

I really wish I had Broken and ...And All That Could've Been. I'd like to buy the Lost ighway soundtrack as well, as The Perfect Drug was the forst NIN song I ever heard almost a decade ago and it's an excellent song. Great work on one of my favorite bands (or rather, artists).

This writeup has convinced me to go all-out and review The Fragile. This shall be my most bone-crushingly good review ever.

[Tommy-r]

good job, very interesting.

NP - Big man with a gun

edit: is that Cash cover of hurt any good? I hear some guys raving about it constantly.

[heavy metal kid]

is it just my Broken version or all of the versions have like A LOT of tracks?

[Shadows]

Broken only has eight tracks. Unusually short for an NIN release.

[repcak]

Originally Posted by Med57

Hey, you're back.

yeah, back again... my first posts after the holidays

Originally Posted by ShadowsFallen

Broken only has eight tracks. Unusually short for an NIN release.

yes, but Broken is really awesome!! i really like it...

[Daven]

I just finished reading the it, great write up dude, and i never imagined he had all that problems when he was younger. It must've been hard for him, but at least that way he was able to write great music

[Jawaharal]

Excellent write up. I love NIN. I'm probably gonna see them in November

[Jawaharal]

Originally Posted by heavy metal kid

is it just my Broken version or all of the versions have like A LOT of tracks?

it has like 99 tracks of nothing that lead up to the last two

[Shadows]

Originally Posted by repcak

yes, but Broken is really awesome!! i really like it...

I've neve heard it.

There was one part of your bio that caught my attention. I had read in various websites that when the local Cleveland guy sent his demo out to ten labels, he basically recieved one rejection after another. TVT was basically a one-in-a-million shot for him. I didn't think he actually got a strong response.

[TojesDolan]

Great Job. Does anyone have an idea of what the real meaning of the Halo's is?

[Daven]

According to what Repcak wrote, its just a way to keep them in order

[repcak]

Originally Posted by TojesDoLan

Great Job. Does anyone have an idea of what the real meaning of the Halo's is?

i wrote it down... to keep the cd's in order;
or do you have something other in mind....

[Shadows]

I think he means, why did Trent use the word 'Halo' as opposed to another word?