With a decorated career now firmly established in scoring film and TV, Nine Inch Nails duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross haven’t put out new music from the aforementioned Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame-inducted industrial metal titans since 2020.
While some would assume that the pair’s demanding side gig in composing has taken up the majority their focus, it turns out that’s not entirely the case as to why NIN have creatively remained silent in recent years.
In a new discussion with producer Rick Rubin, Reznor has revealed that he is also now more invested in his family than once again engaging in the traditional album/touring cycle. He commented in part of that, “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?”
Beyond that though, he also doesn’t feel the current climate of the music industry is right to pour himself into what will essentially amount to a ‘rock album’. He said of that:
“In the context of Nine Inch Nails, in terms of an audience and the culture, the importance of music — or lack of importance of music — in today’s world, from my perspective, is a little defeating. It feels to me, in general — and I’m saying this as a 57-year-old man — 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.”
He added:
“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.”
It’s that line of thought which has led Reznor and Ross to continue to invest themselves into composing and scoring:
“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.
And [I’m] 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.”
Next up from Reznor and Ross is their score for the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles: Mutant Mayhem‘, which is set to open in theaters on August 02nd.
