Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails / How To Destroy Angels
Title TBC
The Null Corporation
ETA Anytime 2012

What they’re saying:
There’s been a lot of confusion about the future of Nine Inch Nails for some time now. Back in 2009, when Trent Reznor announced he was going to be taking a break from touring, a lot of people took that to mean that Nine Inch Nails would be coming to a semi-permanent end too, with Reznor instead refocussing his efforts on his other band, How To Destroy Angels, as well as his burgeoning film scoring career:

“I’m going to be writing for Nine Inch Nails this year. [I don't]have any particular goal in mind other than… my voice as a songwriter feels like it needs to speak up or at least work out a little bit to not atrophy. I think I have something to say that feels unique to who I am right now, and that’s when it tells me it’s time to do something. I enjoy the challenge of moving that kind of brand forward, that identity, shaping it to who I am now instead of who I was a few years ago when I last left off.”

Watch Nine Inch Nails playing with “a poor man’s Coldplay” back before Trent quit touring:

At present there’s no real news on what’s going on with the aforementioned How To Destroy Angels, the band Reznor formed with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and his film-score co-conspirator, Atticus Ross. The band collectively raised their head above the parapet late last year to contribute a track to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtrack that Reznor scored, but that’s about ut. Nor is there any news at the moment regarding any future film score projects for Reznor – although having just recently missed out on a Golden Globe for his soundtrack work on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to some song by Madonna, Reznor’s probably happy to keep matters pertaining to that part of his career close to his chest right about now. Whatever he does though, we can bet that there won’t be any significant amount of touring attached. Read what the man said in an interview with NPR in December last year, and you’ll see what we mean:

“But when you’re on stage, it – I mean, I can say this with complete honesty, that the economics of doing a tour, it usually lasts 70 percent longer than you wish it would last. It’s fun for the first month, you know, maybe two months. And then it – you inevitably reach a point where, okay, I kind of don’t want to be in a hotel in Dusseldorf right now. You know, and playing the same songs tonight.

But when you get onstage, it takes over, you know, the songs take over; you start to – the songs inhabit you. You live inside the songs, you get placed back in that mindset. And I think primarily my decision to, you know, stop touring with Nine Inch Nails, that had a lot to do with it. You know, because it rubs off on you.”

Listen to How To Destroy Angels’ cover of ‘Is Your Love Strong Enough?’ by Bryan Ferry:

We tried to find a quote from Reznor about Leona Lewis. We failed. No new news there then.

Thrash Hits verdict:
Name a release by Trent Reznor that sucked. Go on. You can’t, because there haven’t been any. Sure, some of them might not have been as much to your tastes as others (those still rocking the fishnet-shirt look are probably still bitter there hasn’t been an spiritual follow-up to The Downward Spiral, for example), but by no stretch of the imagination could you ever describe any of his works as bad. And that’s why we’re confident that whatever he puts out in 2012 – be it new Nine Inch Nails material, that long-long-long-delayed How To Destroy Angels album, a new film score, or an entirely new project altogether – it will still be many times more interesting that the nth Thrash Revival band to email us that day to complain that we don’t cover enough Thrash Metal on Thrash Hits. It’s to Reznor’s unending credit that even after nearly a quarter of a century of making music largely on his own, he’s still capable of putting the shivers up us with each new release.

Guitar solo potential: 4/6