Back To Shrines ABOUT NIN+ME TRENT RECS GALLERY

Welcome to my NIN shrine! Like many others I too heard March of the Pigs at aged 12 and never moved on. (I can’t even claim the experience of seeing 90s Trent Reznor and thinking “wow I wish that was me” because it turns out that’s more common than you’d think) I don’t quite know what this section is going to look like yet but I’m excited to add to it.

Trent Reznor recorded his own demos during any spare time he got whilst working as a studio technician in 1986 and decided to name this project Nine Inch Nails “because it was catchy and could be abbreviated to NIN”. He sent demos of his first song Down in It to various labels and ultimately got signed to TVT in 1989. Once he’d recorded NIN’s debut album Pretty Hate MachiNe he assembled a band of Ron Musarra on drums and Chris Verenna on keyboards/programming so he could perform the songs live. After supporting on Skinny Puppy’s and The Jesus and Mary Chain’s respective tours NIN played the 1991 Lollapalooza tour with the band line up of Trent Reznor, Richard Patrick, Jeff Ward and James Wooley. This was the tour that got NIN recognition and also began the tradition of Trent destroying his instruments/fellow band mates/himself on stage.



By 1991 TVT records wanted Trent to release a synth pop album similar to Pretty Hate MachiNe. Trent found this extremely creatively restrictive so had begun a legal battle with the label try and get out of his contract. This led to him recording any new NIN material in secret in various studios across the US (including his own infamous Le Pig). The on stage aggression and the anger surrounding the TVT situation culminated into the much heavier BrokeN EP. Another label, Interscope, entered into a deal with TVT meaning that the EP could be released in 1992 without any creative input from the label. It would also be released under Nothing Records – a vanity label founded by Trent Reznor and his then manager John Malm. (Nothing would also release music by 12 Rounds - Atticus Ross' original band, Marilyn Manson, Pig, Pop Will Eat Itself and Meat Beat Manifesto)



Accompanying music videos were made for all but three songs on BrokeN, and only two were officially released. The videos collectively make up the BrokeN Movie which was never given an official due to its extremely graphic content. Despite this the EP was extremely well received, even earning NIN a grammy for the song Wish.

Trent had begun to work on his next full length album alongside recording Broken, he’d previously moved into his Le Pig studio (the former site of the Tate murders) so he could devote all of his time and energy into music. Nine Inch Nails’ second album, The Downward Spiral, would release in 1994 to critical acclaim. The album focuses on the ‘downward spiral’ and eventual suicide of the protagonist and Trent has been open about how the feelings and thoughts of the protagonist mirrored his own experience and feelings around that time. Music videos for the main singles March of the Pigs and Closer would be on heavy rotation on MTV (with the Closer video having parts censored)

NIN embarked on the Self Destruct tour in support of the album which saw them playing bigger and bigger venues and the performances getting more and more violent (often having to get new instruments for each tour date due to them all being destroyed the previous one) The Self Destruct tour included a now iconic performance at Woodstock '94 which the band played completely covered in mud. Trent commented multiple times throughout the show and in interviews after the fact that he could barely see at all due to the mud in his eyes. This performance drastically increased NIN’s mainstream success.







However, this mainstream success would ultimately be what furthered Trent’s own downward spiral. His anxiety disorder, alcohol addiction, drug addiction and depression worsened expediently due to media attention and the pressure to follow up The Downward Spiral.

After the conclusion of the Self Destruct tour Trent would disappear from the public eye and enter rehab for his issues with drugs and alcohol. Shortly after this he also went into counselling due to the death of his grandmother. Through this he would write the songs I’m Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally and The Day the World Went Away that would ultimately become one of the tracks on NIN’s third album The Fragile. The Fragile would release in 1999 after a long recording process, with two CDs and just under 1 hour 45 minutes of music its one of NIN’s longest releases. It would receive critical acclaim (Pitchfork would change their original 2/10 rating to 8.7/10 when reviewing the vinyl rerelease in 2017) although not to the level of The Downward Spiral .

To promote the album NIN embarked on the Fragility tour (split into two legs: Fragility 1.0 and Fragility 2.0) it was on this tour that Trent would overdose on heroin after mistaking it for cocaine, leading to the cancellation of some shows and another NIN hiatus as he entered rehab for a second time in 2001.

After completing rehab and spending time out of the spotlight (and a lot of time in the gym) Trent wasn’t sure if he’d still be able to write music whilst clean and sober. He began working on simple demos that would eventually become the fourth Nine Inch Nails album [WITH_TEETH]. Released in 2005 this album would be almost the opposite to The Fragile: shorter, with songs that can stand alone from one another instead of having an entire overarching narrative. [WITH_TEETH] would also be the first NIN CD to come without a booklet (one would later be added in the 2019 vinyl release) The main single, The Hand That Feeds, would go on to become one of NIN’s most successful songs after Closer. It was scheduled to be performed live at that years MTV awards but NIN cancelled after MTV wouldn’t allow them to have a large backdrop of then President Bush. Trent would post on nin.com: “We were set to perform "The Hand That Feeds" with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop. Apparently, the image of our President is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.”

The Live: [WITH_TEETH] tour would have its first leg be mostly smaller club venues as Trent was unsure what the reception to the “new NIN” live atmosphere (less destruction, more tambourine) would be. All the club dates instantly sold out so the rest of the tour was booked into arenas. Whilst on tour Trent would begin writing more songs in makeshift studios on the tour bus and in his hotel rooms. When the tour ended he would rent a house in the woods to begin putting these demos into a new album.


In November of 2006 a NIN tour would be announced then that coming January, Trent would announce that the next album would be called Year Zero. The tour began in early February with no further word on the new album and no new songs being performed. On February 12th someone noticed that certain letters on the back of the new tour shirts were highlighted and they spelled out “I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE”. This would begin what would be known as the Year Zero Experience and later, as the Year Zero ARG. There was a new album, but in order to get to it there was a whole dystopian world to uncover and traverse both online and off: websites, covert meet ups, mysterious phone numbers, banned media, USB drives hidden in toilet stalls, the list goes on [I have written about various parts of the ARG here and here, but if you want to see a full breakdown this is here best place to go] On April 1st the full album was “leaked” after a bootleg recording of a listening party from a month prior that someone recorded on their phone was uploaded online. A couple of days later the promotional disc was ripped and uploaded online and later that same day made available to stream for free on nin.com. Its widely suspected that the album was leaked by Trent himself, similar to when the the BrokeN movie surfaced on piracy sites.

On March 2nd 2008 a message appeared on nin.com:

On the link in the above you could download the very unexpected new NIN album, Ghosts I-IV, for $5, on various torrent sites you could download Ghosts I (the first nine tracks) for free, an accompanying message reading: This torrent is an official upload from Nine Inch Nails… Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV Undoubtedly, you'll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you're interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5.

Ghosts I-IVwas the result of a 10 week musical experiment done by Trent with the assistance of Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder, Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. An entirely instrumental album accompanied by beautiful artwork by Phillip Graybill and longtime NIN collaborator Rob Sheridan. Described by Trent as “a soundtrack for daydreams” as during recording they would imagine a scenario then imagine what music would accompany it. This album was NIN’s first independent release and as it was done without any label restrictions it was able to be released in multiple formats as well as the above downloads; CDs, vinyl, CD and DVD multipacks and an ultra deluxe edition containing all the other formats and signed giclee prints.

Despite its $300 price tag, all 2500 copies of the ultra deluxe limited edition sold out within a day of going on sale and the large amount of traffic to nin.com crashed the servers leading to the site having to go down for maintenance. Trent posted the following in response:

NIN’s eighth album, The Slip, was released completely free on nin.com on May 5th 2008. The 10 track album was written, recorded, mixed, mastered and had its art design completed in less than two months. Trent stated he viewed the album as “more of a sketch than an artwork,” due to its extremely fast production time. Similar to Ghosts I-IV , each song on The Slip, has its own artwork that represents it and every download came with a PDF of the artwork.

Later that year a CD version of the album was released, limited to 250,000 copies [I have no. 64,581] Each came with a DVD of NIN performing during rehearsals, a physical booklet and a set of 3 stickers. A vinyl version would also be released, but this version wasn’t numbered.

In support of The Slip and Ghosts I-IV Nine Inch Nails would embark on the Lights in the Sky Tour, at the time the most technologically groundbreaking tour NIN had ever done. Across the stage there was giant interactive transparent screens that were raised and lowered throughout the set. During “Only” the band would be shrouded in static with only Trent able to physically break through it, and for “Echoplex” there would be a giant touch screen drum machine that would be played by drummer Josh Freese (this would occasionally - unintenionally - glitch and malfuction)