Black Sheep Hit: "Closer" is a less aggressive song compared to the loud, industrial madness on most of the rest of The Downward Spiral, but has become the band's biggest hit and probably the poster child of the industrial rock genre.
Channel Hop: Reznor was originally signed to TVT Records, a deal which lasted all of one album before he parted ways with them following an extended feud over his creative direction. In the wake of that, he established his own label, Nothing Records, with John Malm Jr. in conjunction with Interscope Records. Nothing went bust in 2004 after a legal dispute with Malm, leading Reznor to work with Interscope alone for Year Zero, after which he left them and opened another vanity label, the Null Corporation, where he currently remains. Null would bounce around distributors, with some releases being interchangeably distributed by Columbia Records, Polydor Records, and Capitol Records and others being handled by Reznor alone.
Chart Displacement: The band has only scored two top 40 hits: "The Day the World Went Away" (boosted by huge first-week sales of its CD single) and "The Hand That Feeds" (which is also the first of five straight Alternative chart-toppers). "Closer" barely missed it at #41!
Content Leak: A low-quality bootleg recording of Year Zero was leaked to the internet almost 2 weeks before the album's official release date, with a high-quality leak occurring a few days later. In response, the album was made available on its official site before the official release.
Trent went on record disowning most of Pretty Hate Machine a mere two years after its release, citing the extremely withdrawn and antisocial headspace he was in during its production making for "immature", "introverted, claustrophobic" music. Several songs he specifically named as ones he disliked were "Down in It" (as, to him, it was nothing more than a ripoff of Skinny Puppy's "Dig It") and "Kinda I Want To" (as it was difficult to write and went through multiple revisions). That said, Trent warmed back up to the album by the time he finally got to do a remaster, calling it an "old friend."
Trent's actually not a fan of the band's now-iconic Woodstock performance, considering it one of the band's worst. The myriad amounts of technical problems throughout the performance (most famously Trent's keyboard breaking down halfway into "Happiness in Slavery") probably had something to do with this.
Trent isn't fond of "Big Man With a Gun" (which is probably why the band doesn't often play it live), nor is he fond of "Ruiner"; in a Guitar World interview released the month after The Downward Spiral was released, Trent admitted that "Ruiner" was the hardest song to write, and he still wasn't sure that he did it right.
In a 2005 interview with Spin, Trent Reznor commented about his opinion on The Fragile (1999), nowadays considered one of Nine Inch Nails' best works. He associated the album with his mental condition in the late 1990s, criticized its lack of lyrics, and said that he believed he made it out fear of whatever happened to him at the time, filling it with "an unimaginable amount of effort" while unable to think.
Trent went on record with Revolver a year after the release of Bird Box, which he and Atticus Ross scored, stating that the initial process of making the score was overwhelmingly negative for them. He cited difficulties with the film's producers and specifically singled out its editor for mixing their music too low. It would take a thorough extension of the score, released almost a year after the original with an extra 13 tracks included, before their work on the film was comfortably integrated into their discography.
"When we got immersed in it, it felt like some people were phoning it in. And you're stuck with a film editor who had real bad taste. That's kind of our barricade to getting stuff in the film. And the final icing on the shit cake was we were on tour when they mixed it. And they mixed the music so low, you couldn't hear it anyway. So it was like, that was a ... (laughs) That was a fucking waste of time. Then we thought, no one's going to see this fucking movie. And, of course, it's the hugest movie ever in Netflix."
Trent has admitted that it was selfish of him to have recorded The Downward Spiral in the house where Sharon Tate had been murdered for no reason other than his own morbid curiosities, especially after Tate's sister called him out on it.
He also disowned the one album he recorded with Option 30, particularly a notoriously cheesy cover of "Der Kommissar", largely because it had been released without the band's permission.
Creator Breakdown: The Downward Spiral was made during a period where Trent was suffering a downward spiral of his own, induced by problems including depression and drug abuse. Even when the album was released to mass acclaim, Trent was still unhappy due to disillusionment with his newfound fame. It would up bleeding into the sessions for The Fragile, culminating in his admission that he was contemplating suicide while writing "La Mer."
Creator Recovery: With Teeth could be considered this for Trent, who admitted in an interview around the time of the album's release that he was "pretty happy." Reinforcing this is the fact that Trent surprised many fans by returning from his hiatus quite ripped, and that he would end up getting married (to Mariqueen Maandig, with whom he now creates music in How to Destroy Angels) four years later.
"Just Do It," which was left off The Downward Spiral at the advice of producer Flood, who considered it too "up front" about the act of suicide. "The Beauty of the Drug" is another song that didn't make that album for unknown reasons, and it's possible they weren't even recorded.
"The Warning", "Non-Entity" and "Not So Pretty Now" were cut from With Teeth. It's not confirmed as to whether the former is the same "The Warning" that wound up on Year Zero.
Interscope apparently has been in plans to make a NIN compilation album, but nothing has surfaced yet.
Trent mentioned years back he and HBO were planning to have a miniseries for Year Zero, but it's unknown if it's still in development at all.
The Fragile kept being delayed multiple times and wouldn't see release for over two years after it was originally planned.
Doing It for the Art: Considering how he doesn't mind piracy of his albums as well as licensing his late 2000s work under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, it's obvious Trent just really likes making music.
Executive Meddling: Trent doesn't have a happy history with record companies.
Trent has said that With Teeth was the only album his label didn't complain about when it was delivered to them.
TVT Records was rather upset with Pretty Hate Machine because Reznor refused to turn Nine Inch Nails into a second Depeche Mode. Steve Gottlieb, TVT's founder, then tried to sabotage the recording of Broken and Trent's move to Interscope. In a way, it's like Broken was made as a result of this.
Trent calls out Gottlieb in various areas of the EP's music, videos and packaging. In the video for "Gave Up", the words "FUCK YOU STEVE" can be seen on a computer screen; "Physical" contains a barely-audible clip of Trent whispering "Eat your heart out, Steve"; and the EP's liner notes contain a message that reads "no thanks: you know who you fucking are" followed by "the slave thinks he is released from bondage only to find a stronger set of chains."
Reznor would get the last laugh in the end, though, as TVT lost the rights to NIN's work after defaulting on a loan, and eventually went bankrupt in 2008, two years before current owners Bicycle Music authorized a proper remastering of Pretty Hate Machine. Reznor amusingly used the opportunity to give one final jab to Gottlieb and TVT via the remaster's liner notes (where, after the "thank you" section, there's a "fuck you" section with just him and the record label listed).
The official release of Closure on DVD was barred for so long that Trent just released the .ISO files of the DVDs online himself.
Trent wanted to launch remix.nin.com the same day of the Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D release, but this had to be postponed because Universal didn't want to host it.
Oddly enough, Pretty Hate Machine was out of print for a while between the late '90s and 2005, owing to Trent's dispute with TVT and the label's financial troubles. Prudential Financial had actually seized control of the masters along with some other TVT material when the label defaulted on a loan from Prudential, and Rykodisc got the rights to reissue the album on their behalf...for about one year with no remastering. It finally got a proper remaster in 2010 when Prudential sold its TVT holdings to Bicycle Music, with Reznor fully overseeing the effort.
The Broken Movie was found to be too extremely violent to be released (being filmed as a very convincingSnuff Film probably had something to do with it), but finally saw a public leak on the Pirate Bay that was probably from Trent himself. Additionally, there was a failed attempt to release the film on the band's official Vimeo account. As of now, it can be found in full and in high quality on archive.org; bits and pieces have also survived for a surprisingly long time on YouTube.
Trent's one album that he recorded with his old band Option 30 has long since gone out of print. Considering that the album was released without the band's permission and Trent is embarrassed by it, it's probably never going to get a second run.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Ghosts I-IV got this treatment by its release in five different packages: a digital download of the full album in FLAC with digital extras; a 2CD format; a 4 LP format; a Deluxe Edition featuring the CDs, a 24/48 blu-ray and a DVD-ROM with multitrack stems for the full album; and an Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition, which paired the Deluxe Edition with the vinyl copy, a coffee table book of the artwork and two exclusive Giclée prints. A free torrent of the first 9 songs (Ghosts I) also existed.
Initial CD releases of Broken came with a 2-track MiniDisc in addition to the EP's main 6-track disc. This bonus disc was unavailable in vinyl versions until the 2017 definitive edition, which featured it in the form of a 7-inch record. Said edition also rearranged the CD version into a single disc with a large number of silent tracks (tracks 7-97) between the main tracks and bonus ones (placed as tracks 98-99).
The Fragile, which has a "left" and "right" disc on its CD release (both being around 50 minutes long), two tapes on cassette, and three discs on vinyl.
Ghosts I-IV has four discs in its vinyl release, with each disc corresponding to one of the "volumes" within the album. Its CD version, meanwhile, consists of two discs with two volumes each.
Closure was only officially released in VHS format, wherein it was split between two tapes.
Trent is a hugeRoger Waters fan, which only made it all the more amusingly tragic during a 2003 Guitar World interview that paired them up; Trent fell all over himself declaring how much he loved and respected Waters' solo work, only for Waters to apologetically state that he'd never heard any of NIN's music. Trent actually took it surprisingly well. It became a Running Gag on The Meathead Perspective.
Everyone familiar with NIN and Reznor know that his biggest and most influential inspiration is David Bowie. Reznor toured with Bowie in 1995 (even performing "Hurt" together during concerts), remixed two of Bowie's songs for single releases ("The Hearts Filthy Lesson" and "I'm Afraid of Americans"), and starred in the latter single's music video as a stalker chasing down Bowie.
Trent did the soundtrack to Quakefor free, just because he liked the guys at id Software so much (and vice versa).
Even though "The Perfect Drug" is a quite popular song, Trent himself wasn't too happy with it, as he just couldn't get the song's coda to sound the way he wanted it to. It took 21 years for him to perform it live.
The band didn't perform "Sunspots", originally released on With Teeth in 2005, live (bar some sound checks/rehearsals) until the Brixton leg of the NIN 2022 tour, due to Trent Reznor's fear of straining his voice too much during the song.
Reznor's vocal strain is also why "We're In This Together", released in 1999 on The Fragile, has only been performed during the European leg of the Performance 2007 tour. The live performance was also in a lower key than the studio version.
Zig-zagged with "Hurt". The song has a bit of a "cursed" reputation in that several live performances of it have been interrupted for various circumstances (such as technical difficulties and fan trolling), and when it was Covered Up so well by Johnny Cash in 2002, Reznor outright said "that song isn't mine anymore". Still, they continued to play it until about 2005, where they began almost exclusively playing a toned-down version, literally called "Hurt (Quiet Version)", at all live performances. It features Reznor providing vocals and playing the keyboard, with the rest of the band only joining in at the final chorus. The song's original 1994 version from The Downward Spiral is now rarely performed.
A recurring in-universe band in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is Nine Inch Heels, likely a stand-in for Nine Inch Nails (especially considering the comic began about a year after the The Downward Spiral was released).
The original Saw short film's opening title uses a sound effect from "Screaming Slave" (a remix of "Happiness in Slavery" from the Fixed EP).note Charlie Clouser, the composer for the whole Saw franchise including the short film, was a former touring member of the band, though it's unlikely that this is an allusion to him, since he wasn't involved in the remix at all (it came out about 2 years before he joined the band).
Given Trent did the score for Quake, the ammo for the Nailgun comes in boxes with the NIN logo.
Prior to Id Software's collaboration with Trent in Quake, E4M1 of The Ultimate Doom included the Nine Inch Nails logo as an easter egg in a secret area. More recent console ports removed this for legal reasons.
The Nail Vanity accessory for Ranger in Quake Champions also mentions it being made of nine inch. He also has a waist accessory with a rusty box of nails with the band's logo.
The last level of Quake III: Arena in the PC version is called "The Very End Of You", after a line in "We're In This Together".
The recurring boss Reznor in Super Mario World is named in Trent Reznor's honor. Nintendo has a long habit of naming recurring bosses in the Mario franchise for famous musicians.
Kaneshiro in Persona 5, more specifically his Shadow boss form (that being a giant mechanical piggybank) has an attack called "March of The Piggy".
Eminem's "My Name Is" has the first verse start with "Hi kids, do you like violence? Do you wanna see me put nine inch nails through each of my eyelids?"
"Into the Void" from The Fragile is not a Black Sabbath cover, though it very well may have been named in honour of the Sabbath song.
Similarly, The Fragile should not be confused with Fragile by Yes. It's possible, though not confirmed, that Reznor intended his album title as a Shout-Out.
Sleeper Hit: Pretty Hate Machine really only took off about a year after its release. Even then, it only peaked at number 75 on the Billboard chart. It took until 1992 for it to go gold and 1995 to hit platinum.
A recording of Sean Beaven being bitten by Trent's dog Maisy appears in "Physical".
The drum solo in "Piggy" was just Trent testing a new microphone in his studio, but he liked it too much to lose it.
Trent once said that the guitar solo in "Ruiner" was so over-the-top in corniness that it had to be in the song. Ditto for the entirety of "Big Man with a Gun".
Reznor had considered doing quite a bit to promote Year Zero, including blowing up a building, arresting actual fans, and even staging an appearance of the Presence in real life. Of course, these never happened for various reasons, as explained here.
Trent originally wanted With Teeth to be a concept album titled Bleedthrough, but he ended up scrapping the idea after complaining that some people saw the title aspect as a "tampon commercial".
There were two songs composed for The Downward Spiral that never made it to the final album, titled "The Beauty of the Drug" and "Just Do It". The latter gets special mention due to the straightforward mention of suicide with the lyric "Just do it. Nobody cares at all." Producer Flood did not like this, and insisted to Trent to not use either song. They have been scrapped since, but there's no information if Trent ever actually recorded either of them.
Evidently, the "Ocean pulls me close" part of "The Great Below" was originally intended to be sung by a female vocalist.
Trent Reznor was working on a collaboration with PeterChristopherson in the moments leading up to the latter's death—it only went as far as Reznor mailing him raw material to work with, as he died before he could return it with his own contributions.
Bad Witch was intended to be the third EP in the unnamed EP trilogy that preceded Not the Actual Events and Add Violence; however, Trent wanted the release to garner more attention and instead had it labelled as a full-length release. Arguably, this was a response to a mild case of Executive Meddling (particularly by Nine Inch Nails' standards; see that item's examples above), as streaming sites like Spotify tend to ignore EP releases (though Not the Actual Events and Add Violence are available on Spotify now). Of course, some people will find that a more reasonable justification than others will.
Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Various nasty and overly personal comments are the reason Trent isn't as active on Twitter these days. Mostly, he posts news updates now. He even lampshaded this in a now-deleted tweet.
Lots of assholes here!
Writer Revolt: The entire Broken EP is a concentrated blast of this. During his time with his original label TVT Records, Trent Reznor often had to fight Executive Meddling; TVT was initially not pleased to hear Pretty Hate Machine (one executive calling it "an abortion"), only to demand that Trent record a followup in the same style after Machine became a success. In addition, they refused to release Trent from his contract when he tried to leave the label, resulting in Broken having to be recorded in secret. The EP contains a recurring lyrical focus on slavery, as Trent felt his experience with the label was comparably miserable, and includes several disses towards TVT and its founder Steve Gottlieb, such as the liner notes containing the sentences "no thanks: you know who you fucking are" and "the slave thinks he has been released from bondage only to find a stronger set of chains." Years later, on the 2010 remaster of Machine (TVT had been defunct for 2 years at this point), following the "thank you" section of the liner notes, there's a "fuck you" section designated only for Gottlieb and TVT.
with Revolver a year after the release of Bird Box, which he and Atticus Ross scored, stating that the initial process of making the score was overwhelmingly negative for them. He cited difficulties with the film's producers and specifically singled out its editor for mixing their music too low. It would take a thorough extension of the score