Currently attending to the bass role for the industrial rock band’s Peel It Back tour is the multi-talented Stu Brooks, who replaced longtime bassist Alessandro Cortini earlier this year. Luckily, in drummer Josh Freese and guitarist Robin Finck, Brooks has two dedicated role models.

“Josh and Robin are longtime friends,” says Brooks. “We’d previously formed a band for Danny Elfman’s Coachella performance in 2020, which was postponed due to the pandemic. Instead we ended up recording Danny’s record Big Mess.

“I then had the privilege of producing a companion release, Bigger. Messier., which included collaborations with Trent Reznor on True and Native Intelligence. That was my first introduction to Trent.”

Defining a place in a band as celebrated as Nine Inch Nails may seem a near-impossible task, especially given that his predecessors include the likes of Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Pino Palladino, Danny Lohner, Jeordie White and Eric Avery, but Brooks was more than up to the challenge, proving once again that Reznor’s instinct for spotting talent is as keen as ever.

“I actually feel like I’ve been molded for this gig. Trent has been an influence on me from the beginning of my career, and I’ve known these songs for years. That’s not to say it isn’t still a very challenging gig. I certainly had a ton of homework to do, but it has all felt very natural.

“The team has made me feel like I’m right where I belong. I’m super-grateful for that, and I’m excited to see the band get better and better.”

Diving into an experimental mix of sounds, Brooks displays the kind of creativity and restraint that had previously defined his role within Elfman’s band, but has still found a way to carve his own distinctive voice within the mix.

“Trent gave me the opportunity to experiment in preparation for the tour, but if there was something that needed adjustments he would always chime in. His ears are so dialed.

“I had some freedom to come up with new bass parts for Heresy and Copy of A. We went back and forth a bit and eventually came up with a unique arrangement that’s specific for this tour.”

Add to this the fact that tuning varies from song to song, and that Brooks is often obliged to switch from guitar to bass to keyboards.

“For this tour I need to cover guitar, synth, piano and bass parts, not to mention vocals. I jump from guitar to bass guitar on Mr. Self Destruct, and Reptile is another one that’s busy with a whole array of samples and synths.

“Gave Up is super-fun having to multi-task between guitar and synth parts, and playing piano on Hurt is devastatingly beautiful.”

And what of the Nine Inch Nails bass sound?

“I’ve been able to utilize the team: Jamie Pollack at front of house, Connor Hawkins at monitors, Dustin Mosley, my tech Edward Mendoza, and of course Robin Finck and Atticus Ross. They have all helped out with tones on bass.

“Sound design is a huge part of this gig, but the experience has been highly collaborative, with patience, attention to detail, and nuance that have been truly inspiring and will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression on me.”

What was it like preparing for the tour?

Robin and I literally went knee to knee with our guitars for a couple of weeks and went over everything that I had prepped. He knows the material so intimately that by the end of those practice sessions with him I had come a long way.

We then took it to a sound stage with a PA, added our techs to the mix and started focusing in on “the rig” and sound design. We prepped about 40 songs.

After about a week of that we had tech rehearsals with the audio crew and the rest of the band. Then we moved it to New Orleans and rehearsed a couple of times at the venue, adding lights and visuals. It was a very well organized and gradual ramp up to the first show.

What’s been your most memorable moment so far?

That first show was such a giant shot of adrenaline and it was such a huge relief to have it under my belt. I had a quiet moment after the show by myself, reflecting and full of gratitude, savouring the moment.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

To be completely honest, I’d say the time leading up to the first rehearsal was the hardest part. Staying confident in myself, keeping anxiety at bay and fighting off any negative thought patterns. I’ve done a lot of work on that over the past few months and I have a grown a lot.

How have you approached the gig?

I’m aiming to replicate the studio albums as accurately as possible, while naturally incorporating some of my own personality. The exciting aspect of Nine Inch Nails is the diverse styles and range present in their catalog. I’ve always been a big fan of Danny Lohner’s and if I can incorporate just a percentage of his spirit on stage then I’m happy.

What’s your bass and pedal setup for this tour?

The pedal setup is all Neural DSP Quad Cortex into a Jad Freer Sisma. There are no actual stompboxes. That really helps with the consistency element.

I needed a different bass for every tuning and some with Hipshot detuners, so I’ve been using several P-Basses. Fender’s new American Pro II is ridiculously good. I’m using those, along with a couple vintage P’s from 1978.

I love LaBella’s Olinto basses and I’m using a couple of those as well. I’m also using the new Yamaha Broadbass BB734A. Peter Hook always used the BB basses and his name is referenced all the time.

I’ve always used LaBella strings, and for this gig I have these on all the basses: RX-S4D Rx Stainless, 45-65-85-105.

I’m also playing some baritone guitar, but for guitar I’m mostly playing a Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty. James Carbonetti, who is part of the LaBella and Olinto family, also made me an incredible guitar called a Moonphase.

You’ve also worked with the likes of Lady Gaga, Mary J Blige, Lauryn Hill and 50 Cent – what would you count as your highlights?

50 Cent was actually the sponsor for my first artist visa to the USA. Around that time, I was also working on demos with Stefani Germanotta, and midway through the project she changed her name to Lady Gaga.

Being there at the beginning of her career, watching her get signed and then have the career that she’s had has been amazing to watch.

I’ve also been playing with Dominic Fike for around 4 or 5 years. He’s incredibly talented, and his voice is like a soothing ASMR experience for me. His entire journey is so unique, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.

Joining Danny Elfman’s band in early 2020 was another career highlight. When I was working with him for his Bigger Messier record, I had the chance to put together an entire album that led to collaborations with Squarepusher, Iggy Pop, Death Grips, Scientist, and Ghostemane. We have a record that we have been working on coming out in the Fall of 2026 on Sumerian records.

Do you feel your experience as a composer and producer has helped your bass playing to develop in a more musical way?

Absolutely! It’s a constant challenge to strike the right balance between keeping things simple and making them engaging. Knowing when to stay supportive and when to really let the bass shine is key.

Producing and arranging in the studio are great ways to hone that skill. It helps you understand dynamics, the flow of a song, how to blend with other instruments, and how to create tones that sit well in the mix.

Where can we hear more of your music?

I recently returned from Jamaica where I recorded a bunch of tunes with the late drummer and producer Sly Dunbar. We recorded in his studio at Anchor Studios and the legendary Tuff Gong Studios. I will be including that on the solo stuff I’ve been working on.

Last year I released an album under my name on Dine Alone Records that features collaborations between me and Flowdan, Richard Divine, Machine Girl, HR of Bad Brains, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers, Scientist, Twin Shadow, Fever 333, N8NOFACE, and more.

My most recent release is a collaboration between me and N8NOFACE called Bad Man Back Again, which I produced with Dustin Mosley. He has been working with Nine Inch Nails in the studio and as a tech for 20 years now.

If you had some lasting advice for bass players, what would it be?

One of the most important things about being a bassist is to stay true to your personality and let your life and musical journey come through in your bass playing.

Stay authentic to your true self. Be confident in that, but remain humble and gracious. Be respectful and treat people with dignity and respect.

Alongside his work with King Crimson, the prog electric guitar great also carved out a prolific session career, working with a huge list of big-name artists from the likes of Paul Simon and David Bowie all the way to Tom Tom Club and Talking Heads.

His collaboration with Nine Inch Nails, though, is up there as one of his more adventurous partnerships. In the early 1990s, when Trent Reznor was putting together the project’s second record, The Downward Spiral, Belew was brought on board to provide guitars.

However, when he received the call, he needed to be convinced by his manager before he was fully onboard.

“I had no idea who Nine Inch Nails were. To be honest, my manager had to talk me into this one,” Belew remembers in an interview with Vulture. “He said, ‘No man, these guys are doing really well. They’ve got a big following. You should go check it out and talk to this guy named Trent Reznor.’

“I was in Los Angeles and had my gear, so there was no reason not to. I drove up to this house, and it was very strange-looking. It had a big electric fence around it and every single window was blacked out, but it looked like a farmhouse.”

Belew’s early reservations quickly evaporated, and before long he was deep in Nine Inch Nails territory. So deep, in fact, that he can’t recall the ins and outs of the sessions. He can’t even remember how long he was in the studio with Reznor.

“I went in and we started working right off the bat. I don’t even know how long I was there – they brought in food and we never left, we just kept plowing through music.

Trent wanted me to check out all of his songs and would ask, “Is there anything you’d like to do in this? Is anything inspiring you?” He was pretty quiet, but quietly intense. He had a group of guys around him, kind of like his own posse who did different things. That became The Downward Spiral. I later found out the place we were recording was the Sharon Tate house.”

The collaboration proved to be so effective that plans were mooted for Belew to join Reznor for a Nine Inch Nails tour: “I was going to go on tour with them, but Trent changed his mind, so that didn’t work out,” Belew reveals. “I think it was for the better. But I still love him.”

Belew’s resumé isn’t short of A-list collaborators. He also once worked on one of Mariah Carey’s Number One hit singles – but, as he once told Guitar World, he had no idea about the song’s success until a fan once asked him to sign a copy of the CD.

Brooks comes heavily credentialed. He is the co-founder of Dub Trio, has a string of high-profile pop collaborations that include Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, and 50 Cent, and he even sat in with the Saturday Night Live house band. You might also recognize him from Danny Elfman’s 2021 solo album, Big Mess.

According to Bass Magazine, he has been in rehearsals with the NIN camp for some time now, which we would imagine is a considerable undertaking.

NIN frontman/leader Trent Reznor put together an epic 21-track set for the show, opening with Something I Can Never Have on the B-stage, playing Non-Entity for the first time since 2009, and then there was hit after hit after hit (Wish, March of the Pigs, Reptile, and so on).

What can NIN fans expect from Brooks? Well, he has a reputation for having a thick, plummy, treacle-thick bass tone, pure dub on four strings. He’s also a producer, too, so he knows how to put a track together, put something down on tape.

In a 2022 interview with EarthQuaker Devices, Brooks explained how he got his sound. The bad news for those who like their bass set up all slinky is that the strings are heavy.

“My approach to getting a good dub tone has definitely changed over the years,” said Brooks. “But first, I would say get some LaBella flatwound strings. I love the La Bella 0760M Deep Talkin’ Bass 1954 Stainless Flat Wound 52-110 set. Those are heavy gauged! That’s actually the very same string set that James Jamerson used.”

Brooks described his tone as “woofy, round, and sometimes wooly” and said that he would use a Gibson EB-2 or a Höfner bass for old-school reggae – a Fender Jazz Bass set up once more with flatwound bass strings and played through an Aguilar preamp gives him a more modern dub tone.

Are the Nine Inch Nails too animalistic, too mechanistic, for recontextualizing the ür-Motown Records bass tone? Maybe. But then Brooks has the pedals to switch things up. He has form for applying them in radical ways.

With Dub Trio, he would sometimes put the front-of-house mix through an EQD Bit Commander, which strikes us as the kind of power-move that would have got Mr Reznor’s attention.

“That was one of the most brutal sounds I’ve ever achieved with a band,” he said. “It was on the song Noise off of the album IV.”

In a story that feels like an alternative reality fever dream, the guitarist – who is currently on the promo trail for his second album with Iron Maiden riff-slinger Adrian Smith – could have taken a rather different career path in the early 2000s.

“The closest band that I ever came to joining was Nine Inch Nails, and nobody knows that,” he confesses to Hot Metal.

The worlds of Richie Kotzen and Trent Reznor may feel far removed, but it turns out that bassist Jeordie White (AKA Twiggy Ramirez), who was plying his low-end trade in NIN at the time, was a mutual friend.

“He said to me, 'Listen, you've got to come down. We're having a hard time finding a guitar player,'” Kotzen recalls. “So I went down to Third Encore [rehearsal studio in North Hollywood] and spent the day.

“Trent told me, 'You're by far the best guy that we've tried. I would love to have you in the band. I'm gonna have my manager reach out to you.' And I left that day thinking, 'Wow, okay, I'm gonna join another band.”

Kotzen, however, never got that call.

“A week went by. And then another week went by,” he continues. “I ran into Jeordie and I said, 'What happened?' He said [Reznor] didn't want to open up Rolling Stone magazine and see [the headline], 'Nine Inch Nails gets former Poison guitar player, Richie Kotzen'. He didn't want the association with a hair metal band in that camp.”

Kotzen had joined Poison in 1991 and featured on Native Tongue two years later.

“You know, aesthetically, when you think about the fanbase and you think about how people would read into something... I could see the point,” Kotzen continues. “So I jokingly said, 'Hey, I'll do it under an alias,' because I wasn't doing anything at the time and I think he's a genius and I would have loved to have worked with him.

“That wasn't the first time that that stopped me going in one direction or the other,” Kotzen adds. “On the other side of the coin, I don't regret having been a part of Poison, because I think we made a really great record. And so I would much rather have that record... than have done any of the other stuff that I could have done.

“But that's kind of how the music business is. It's not just about the music, a lot of people listen with their eyes. And it's unfortunate in a situation like that. But it is a reality.”

We’ll just have to file this in the ‘What could have been’ folder, alongside former Ozzy guitarist Gus G turning down auditions for Megadeth and Machine Head, and Kiko Loureiro pushing for Marty Friedman’s return to Dave Mustaine’s band following his departure.

Meanwhile, Harvey Mandel says he nearly became a Rolling Stone, believing he was better suited to the job than Ronnie Wood, and Lita Ford nearly joined Led Zeppelin.

Trent Reznor’s burgeoning industrial rock outfit would take to the stage at 4pm, while the sun was still up, and tear through tracks from debut album Pretty Hate Machine, before taking out the angst accumulated throughout their set on their equipment.

By all accounts, it was a sight to behold. Dave Navarro branded their sets “one of the most exciting things that I’d ever seen”. Tom Morello succinctly summarized, “Nine Inch Nails kicked everybody’s ass.”

In this exclusive extract from Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival – the latest tell-all book from Guitar World writers and Nothin’ But a Good Time authors Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour – the full story behind NIN’s tumultuous sets is laid bare: the frantic music store dashes to buy more cheap guitars to destroy; the last-minute repairs; and that time Body Count smashed a pricey Gibson by mistake.

But as Trent Reznor observes, it’s a sacrifice worth making in the name of art.

“I am not going to be pretentious enough to say I never realized that if I break things it gets reactions. It is entertainment, right? That’s the bottom line.”

RICHARD PATRICK (guitarist, Nine Inch Nails) Job number one on Lollapalooza was to be as punk as fuck. We were absolutely dedicated to total mayhem and anarchy. Trent would tackle me several times during the show, I would throw beers at him, I would throw beers at the audience. It was the most decadent, crazy, do-not-give-a-fuck thing.

FRITZ MICHAUD (monitor engineer, Nine Inch Nails) I had to cover every single monitor wedge with Visqueen plastic wrap and duct-tape it on there every show, because Trent would throw beer and water in the crowd all day long, and he would immediately throw it right into the monitors if I didn’t cover them. Then the horns would stop working and the monitors would sound like there was a blanket over them.

JON KLEIN (guitarist, Siouxsie and the Banshees; touring guitarist, Sinéad O'Connor) They’d be filling the keyboards up with beer and smashing them, busting the guitars up…

MARK O’SHEA (tour manager, Nine Inch Nails) Trent was throwing Richard around onstage, yelling at the crowd, “Come on, you fuckers! Let’s go!” Just working the audience up.

TRENT REZNOR (singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, Nine Inch Nails) The show developed as we got more angry at the audience and they liked it. And then it got more abusive and dangerous and they seemed to like us more.

RICHARD PATRICK My knees are still fucked up from that tour. I actually had to have back surgery because I walked with a limp for, like, ten years. Because my whole right leg was just whaled on. Chiropractors and doctors were like, “How long did you play college football?” I’d go, “It wasn’t college football. It was Trent Reznor.”

JON KLEIN They had this thing where every time they’d turn up in town, the crew would go out and buy cheap secondhand guitars and keyboards.

MARKY RAY (guitar tech, Nine Inch Nails, 1991; roadie, Ministry, 1992) So what happened was, on a day off, Mark O’Shea would give me a couple grand in cash. And we’re in the middle of America. Lollapalooza was the stay-forty-five-minutes-outside-of-every-major- city-in-America-tour, okay? So we’re at the Great Woods in Mansfield [Massachusetts]. We’re at Waterloo Village in New Jersey. We’re at Blossom Music Center outside of Cleveland, where I live.

They’d give me money and I would have to call up a pawnshop, a music store, find whatever was open. And remember, this is pre-internet. No cell phones, no anything. I’m calling on a landline using the Yellow Pages in a hotel room. I’d be like, “Do you have any…” We always needed to have a Kramer, a Schecter, a Jackson, a Charvel Charvette, some cheap student-line guitar.

MARK O’SHEA As long as we could get something with great pickups in it, which most of those guitars at the time had, we were good to go.

MARKY RAY So I’d be at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, I’d have to get to an airport, rent a car, drive into the city with my two thousand dollars in cash, find a pawnshop, and go, “How much you want for these five Charvels and a Schecter?” “Two grand? Here you go.” Then I’d take all the guitars – no cases, not even strung – throw them in the trunk, drive back to the venue, and set them up. And we had one song in the set, Ringfinger, that Trent would smash the guitar.

CHRIS HASKETT (guitarist, Rollins Band) I’d be on the bus with poor Marky Ray, who was having to rebuild guitars that Richie Patrick and Trent had smashed that day, getting them ready and working for the next day.

MARKY RAY The other thing I’d do is I’d go out there like the guy cleaning up shit after the elephants and take all the broken parts and literally put them in a trash can that Kevin Lyman and I would throw on the back of the semis at the end of the night.

And yes, we learned how to fix guitar necks so they could use them the next day. And that consisted of, you take a broken neck and you throw as much wood glue as you can in there, and then you C-clamp it, and then you run drywall screws countersunk on either side of the truss rod, and then you break off the ends on the back of the neck and sand them down, and then you sit ’em overnight, and you can restring ’em just enough that they’ll hold for maybe a song. Maybe. And those would be some of the guitars I would hand to Trent to smash.

RICHARD PATRICK Trent always wanted to raise the bar higher. He would be hyper-focused on trying to figure out different ways to elevate the show. We still had the punk ethic of “Fuck you, we’ve got a lot to prove.” It wasn’t the fully realized thing that Nine Inch Nails became. We were paying our dues, but at the same time, we were very, very, very confident as to what was going on. We knew we were the shit.

MISSY WORTH (marketing consultant, Lollapalooza 1991) I was the promoter at the venue in Ohio [the Blossom Music Center], and Nine Inch Nails is from Cleveland and had not played Cleveland in forever. We all kept telling the venue, “You need more security than you’ve got.” But also, “The security has to be really cool. They can’t just go crazy.” So Nine Inch Nails starts playing… and the place goes fucking wild. Everyone from the lawn is now in the seats. Everyone is everywhere.

MARK O’SHEA Basically they came down en masse, and you could see all the ushers literally turn sideways, like a turnstile gate. They just let everybody run down.

MISSY WORTH This is mayhem that you’re not gonna fix. You lost the venue. Like, “Holy fuck!” Now all you can do is pray and hope that no one’s getting hurt. And thankfully no one did. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a show. And it was my own show.

MARK O’SHEA The Cleveland show is where Eric Avery and Dave Navarro were encouraged to come out and play guitar on Head Like a Hole.

DAVE NAVARRO (guitarist, Jane’s Addiction) We smashed guitars, we did a lot of stage diving and banging into each other and just the whole thing that was going on with them at the time.

MARK O’SHEA There was this mass of people up front, so Eric and Dave smashed their guitars and then dove into the audience. Then Trent stage dives. Then Richard stage dives. Next thing you know, I’m in the audience and I’m trying to grab Richard and throw him back up onstage. When I finally pulled him out, he had nothing left but his combat boots and his tighty-whities.

MARKY RAY The Head Like a Hole thing, during the course of the shows, Fritz and I started playing on that song. I think the first time we did it was at Sandstone Amphitheater, near Kansas City. We came up onstage, and all the crews and bands lost their shit. They were like, “Oh my god, that’s so cool! You guys played live auxiliary guitar on Head Like a Hole!”

After that, it was open season. Everybody wanted to do it. The next thing you know, Eric and Dave were playing. Ernie C from Body Count. The Butthole Surfers. Ice-T would come up to me and he’d be like, “Marky Ray, I want to smash a guitar.” And I’d go, “But Ice, man, it’s the last one I got.” Then John Malm would say, “Marky Ray, give Ice-T a guitar.” I’d hand him a guitar, and he’d go out onstage and wouldn’t even plug it in. He just acted like he was playing, like blinka… smash!

JON KLEIN The last Lollapalooza show Nine Inch Nails did, Dave Navarro gave me his video camera and said, “A load of us are going to jam, ’cause they’ve invited us to smash guitars up.” And I sat on the side of the stage filming it for Dave. And what I remember is all the usual suspects come out and grab a guitar. And then one of the big Body Count geezers comes out. And it’s like, “Oh, this looks interesting…”

Zoom in on him. He wasn’t the kind of guy that you’d normally see picking up a guitar. And he walks up, walks straight past the rack of cheap guitars, grabs one of Trent’s really expensive ones and turns it into matchwood. I seem to remember it was a Gibson Explorer that he smashed up that night.

MARKY RAY Henry [Rollins] would sit there on our bus, incensed, going, “How can a guy break a fifteen-hundred-dollar Explorer? What kid wouldn’t give his right nut for something like that?”

RICHARD PATRICK We just did not give a fuck. We were just out to satisfy our animal instincts onstage. I think we spent forty thousand dollars on gear that we smashed on Lollapalooza.

Excerpted from LOLLAPALOOZA: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour © 2025 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.

• Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival is out on March 25, and available to preorder from Amazon.

Through his work with Air, Ima Robot, Macy Gray, Gnarls Barkley, Nelly Furtado, Garbage, Pink, Ladytron, They Might Be Giants, and Goldfrapp, Meldal-Johnsen has shown that his range as a bassist is rivalled only by his versatility as a player – in the broader sense – on the business side of music.

He has produced too many hip alternative acts to mention, and worked as A&R rep for Dangerbird Records, an independent label with releases from Eric Avery, Sea Wolf, and Silversun Pickups.

Back in May 2007, a serendipitous twist in Meldal-Johnsen's career took place when his fan letter to industrial music icon Trent Reznor (following Reznor's free online release of The Slip) resulted in an invite to join Nine Inch Nails. That it happened the very week he and Beck decided to suspend their longtime working relationship is fitting for a bass man who's among the busiest in the business.

“I downloaded The Slip the day it came out,” Meldal-Johnsen told Bass Player. “I got so excited about it I decided to write to Trent. I wrote something along the lines of, ‘Hey Trent – I'm Justin, bass player for Beck, and I just wanted to let you know as a peer that I'm really digging how lean and focused the album is. I like it. Thanks for the free record.’

“A few days later, Beck told me he needed to restructure his band to make it more lo-fi than what we'd been doing. Then I got a call from Trent's manager, who asked, ‘Are you at all interested in being in a big rock band?’ Then Trent called and said, ‘I've been hearing about you for years, and you come really highly recommended. I think we should meet.’

“After meeting, he emailed me a list of songs to learn, and I came in to audition. I rocked out, and they were stoked. Trent asked, ‘Who wants Justin in the band?’ and they all raised their hands. We talked some logistics and we were done. A few days later, I was digging into the setlist for a world tour!”

The following Bass Player interview took place in October 2008.

From a playing perspective, what's it like being part of a Nine Inch Nails production?

“I can't even tell you, It turns up the volume on your whole emotional landscape. I'm like a wide-eyed kid. When everybody on board is contributing to the same goal, it creates an almost military mentality. That's what I like most about touring. I like exciting large groups of people, and I like working in an army.”

What makes you the right person for this gig?

“Trent is looking to achieve a new level of musical flexibility in his band. We're going to be rendering material he's never done, and the savvy he needs spans from sensitive arco upright bass to synth programs and larger sound design. Trent needs musicianship, but he doesn't just need a great rock bass player; he needs something broader, and that's what I bring.”

“Another thing is more basic – a clear, drug-free persona, because that's the way he rolls. We're all grown men, and we want to do this really well. We're pros, you know? Punctuality, preparedness, a direct understanding of the human-to-gear interface – he needs all that.”

How did you approach designing your bass sounds in this new setting?

“Trent would give me a daily assignment of three or four songs to learn. I would go home, chart them, and play them until I didn't need the chart anymore. I would think of the tone and make notes on the chart of what I might want to drum up with pedals and amps. Then I'd come in and dial up sounds.

“Trent would occasionally make comments like, ‘That should sound zingier’, or ‘brighter’, or ‘dirtier’, and in minutes I'd have a whole different sound for him. I'd take digital photos of the settings to keep track.”

What basses do you have in your touring rig?

“I have a custom Fender Jaguar with two P-Bass pickups. I bought three Gibson Thunderbirds and modified them with new old-stock '70s pickups, Badass bridges, bone nuts, and Grover tuners. They have a twangy-ness that I love – a Rickenbacker-like sprang – and they’re woofy on the very bottom.

“The American Standard P-Bass I have has a lively sound and a lot of sustain, and the Jaguar is like a thicker Jazz Bass. For me, the sound of Nine Inch Nails comes from the Jaguar and Geddy Lee basses.”

You're playing challenging material from the instrumental Nine Inch Nails release, Ghosts I-IV.

“There are some songs we think are transcendent and interesting, and others that might not go over that great because they are dramatic in a way that might be too subtle for the audience. It's a grand experiment, and it's what gives us a lot of drive for this tour.

“When we started busting it out in rehearsal, we realized we could essentially do modern chamber music in a way that could blow some minds. I'm playing upright bass, electric bass, mandolin, electric guitar, a Guild acoustic bass guitar, and keyboards. It's kind of a new frontier, and – sink or swim – we're excited.”

How much freedom is there for you in Nine Inch Nails?

“Not a lot. In Nine Inch Nails, the bass parts are bass parts. But as the days go on, I'm adding my own personal inflection, and Trent welcomes that. It just needs to be done with taste and discretion.”

You're also singing on a lot of songs.

“Back when I first started with Beck, he asked me, ‘Do you sing?’ I said no, and he said, ‘Good. Here are the parts.’ With nearly everything I've done since then, there's always been vocals. I'm not a great singer, but I enjoy trying.

“In Nine Inch Nails there are a lot of odd times or oblique phrases in the bass, and singing over them has been a real pat-your-head, rub-your-tummy thing. It's a beast, but it's nothing people haven't done before.”

How do you view the state of the music industry and your place in it?

“Record sales are abysmal, labels are contracting if not closing, and no-one's signing any big advances anymore, things are in a poor state. But I've been doing better each year, probably by the virtue of my love for playing.”

Be it his deeply brooding personality, angular approach to the guitar, or his early association with Trent Reznor through his tenure with NIN, Patrick – along with a few others – treated the guitar heroics of the '80s as nothing more than dirt on the bottom of his Doc Martens.

Records like Short Bus (1995) and Title of Record (1999) read back as classics loaded with gems that defined '90s alt-rock like few others. And, sure, Patrick is proud of his accomplishments, but that doesn't mean he's resting on his laurels.

In fact, according to Patrick, Filter's latest, The Algorithm, stands chest to chest with anything he's done prior.

"I had a lot of fun, and I think The Algorithm is right there with Title of Record, Short Bus, or The Amalgamut aka, 'the classic records'," Patrick says. "But if I had to pick my definitive statement, aside from The Algorithm, I'd pick Title of Record."

"Title of Record encapsulates everything this band is known for and can do. You've got Take a Picture, Welcome to the Fold, I'm Not the Only One, and a ton of songs that have really held up. And that's why I'm so excited about The Algorithm because, in a bunch of years, I think people will be talking about it in the same way."

Patrick's sentiments seem in line, as The Algorithm is filled with the frantic sounds that once made Patrick a staple of terrestrial radio and VH1's Pop Up Video.

A combination of cutting-edge tech and classic guitars keeps Filter's signature sound in the present, Patrick explains.

"I have a whole arsenal of stuff that I have inside my computer, like Universal Audio presets, Marshall amp simulator, and a ton of amazing plugins," he reveals.

"That stuff aside, I have a variety of guitars that I use, but my most-used is this Telecaster that I've had forever. It's got a Seymour Duncan Parallel Axis pickup in it, which, to me, is basically the sound of the '90s. It's super-high gain and pairs so well with the Bogner and Bad Cat amps that we used. But as far as writing, I try and go with stuff that sounds like it's ready and that I can record right away."

In support of The Algorithm, Filter's Richard Patrick dialed in with Guitar World to dig into his creative process, his 'punk rock' approach to guitar, and working and reuniting with NIN's Trent Reznor.

Tell me about Filter's latest record, The Algorithm. 

"I was calling it Rebus, which was the sequel to Short Bus, but that ended up not happening because there were some issues with PledgeMusic, who was supposed to be funding it. They collapsed, and the whole thing fell through, and then I was calling it They Got Us Right Where They Want Us, but they didn't stick, either. In the end, I spent a lot of time thinking, working on these songs via my computer, synthesizing my guitars, and basically drowning myself in this music."

What were some of the challenges of putting this record together primarily by yourself, as opposed to the '90s when you presumably had a full band behind you?

"For starters, the budgets are different [laughs]. Back in the '90s, heavy rock music was the big-selling thing, but not so much now. This was before music piracy and the absolute slaughter that happened over the last several years when budgets dried up. Now I have to be way thriftier, and I only really keep this running by doing film scores. 

"Without the side hustle, I don't know if I'd even be able to make new Filter records anymore. For example, Title of Record had a $1,000,000 budget, but with this new record, I had maybe $20,000. That's why I'm so proud of this– I made something that sits alongside those old albums and did so by overcoming the obstacle of budgetary limitations."

Is harnessing the classic Filter guitar sound on a shoestring budget difficult?

"The truth is that I've always been a cheater [laughs]. I've always used amp simulators, guitar processors, and all kinds of shit like that. I tracked everything, but was a bit too sloppy, so I had my good friend Jonny Radtke come in and re-track everything for me. He took my parts and re-recorded them in a single afternoon. Having Jonny there to clean things up was important because I've always been very punk rock and pretty sloppy."

Why do you feel you're sloppy, and how have you evolved since your heyday?

"I just think my style is so rooted in punk rock like Joe Strummer, but also heavy metal like Dimebag Darrell. I'm not saying I'm as good as either of those guys, but that's where I take a lot of inspiration from. When Filter plays live, I do this weird solo where I go bonkers, do dive bombs, and am feeding back all over the place while also fucking going crazy with the whammy bar; it's nuts. 

"I'm not a technical or amazing player, but I fucking feel it, you know? I have spirit. I like to find this out there, weird shit, and it doesn't matter if I'm a poor player or whatever; I'll take my spirit and caring about what I'm doing over being technically gifted. I've always been that way, and I don't think that will ever leave me, man."

That same spirit probably attracted Trent Reznor to you.

"Yeah, man, that's true. My ethic and ethos are deeply rooted in punk rock, but I also grabbed all kinds of crazy shit from Skinny Puppy, Dimebag, Joe Strummer, and even fucking Mick Taylor [laughs]. I'm all over the place. I'll do a dive bomb out of nowhere in the name of art, and I'm okay with that. It doesn't need to be perfect or technical; leave it alone, you know? 

I see that shit as perfect and exactly as it should be. So, my guitar playing is a lot of 'fuck you,' and that's what Trent saw in me. He loved the fact that I had that sort of attitude. He gave me a place to shine, and I felt nothing but gratitude. But I'm still all about the same craziness, feedback, and locking into some sort of fucking power groove."

You reunited with Trent and NIN in the fall of 2022. How did that come about?

"That was one of the greatest moments that I've ever had on stage in my life. The crowd was amazing and so receptive. Trent asked me to sing Eraser, and I barely got through it because I had tears in my eyes. I fought through that and started screaming the part that's at the end, and man, it was just so unbelievably overwhelming. I was so happy to be there; it was such a special moment. 

"I've always loved Trent, but I love him even more now for it. And then we did Hey Man, Nice Shot, which was fucking insane. The fact that we got up and did my song… fucking amazing. Trent gave me so much time to shine, and I'm very appreciative. It was perfect to potentially close out my life with NIN."

Does that mean it was a one-off?

"Well, it was perfect closure. I really hope it happens again, but you never know. And so, if it never does happen again, I'm totally satisfied and happy because Trent gave me an opportunity to jump on stage with NIN one last time and rock out."

What have you learned from working with Trent that you still carry with you today?

"Trent was all about that punk rock attitude, which we had in common. His ethics were totally punk rock, which was interesting because we were coming out at the tail end of fucking guitar hero, finger tapping, a million notes a second, hair metal stuff. What we were doing with Pretty Hate Machine was kinda like Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, and Skinny Puppy. 

"The way we approached the guitars was they were a means to an end. They were about making a song complete or finishing it off rather than standing out. We didn't view them as a means to make a musical statement; we were very 'fuck you' about it. It was like the total opposite... the complete antithesis of what was going on with the era."

I can still hear that in your approach to this day.

"Fuck, yeah. Trent taught me that being yourself is the most original thing you can do. And, to me, that's the most important thing. I still follow my gut, be myself, let it rip, and keep having that same fucking attitude I've always had. And I'm pumped, man. We're gonna go on tour with Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, and Ministry; we're calling it The Freaks on Parade Tour. The record is out soon, and I've got a lot of friends I wanna go see. It's gonna be awesome."

• The Algorithm is out on August 25 via Golden Robot Records.

After playing a sprawling set of classics at the Blossom Music Center on Saturday (September 24) including March of the Pigs, Heresy, Closer and The Hand That Feeds, the current NIN lineup called drummer Chris Vrenna, multi-instrumentalist Danny Lohner, keyboardist/synth player Charlie Clouser and guitarist Richard Patrick to the stage, all of whom played with the outfit in its earlier days.

The collective subsequently played a handful of songs from the band’s early-’90s catalog, including Eraser, Wish, Sin and Give Up, before closing the set with Head Like a Hole.

Notably, they also performed a cover of Hey Man Nice Shot, originally by Filter, the band Richard Patrick has fronted since his less-than-friendly exit from Nine Inch Nails in 1993. 

The reunion performance came after the current and former NIN members attended a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-organized 'Nine Inch Nails Fan Day' the day before. Nine Inch Nails were inducted into the Rock Hall in 2020 in a virtual ceremony.

In a live Q&A session on September 23, Reznor reflected on the “tough decisions” that had to be made to exclude certain historical members of Nine Inch Nails from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. He said that the most important thing was getting together “everybody that’s been a part of it and just have a minute to say, ‘Nice job.’”

“We’ve been friendly throughout the years and I thought it would be nice to have everyone come up and acknowledge and feel okay about it.”

Richard Patrick, who was not inducted into the Hall of Fame, departed NIN in the early ‘90s due to creative differences with Trent Reznor. 

“I couldn’t go on the road and be the guitar player that couldn’t write what he plays,” he told Alternative Press in 1995. “It was frustrating because I had to come to that realization. Even though Trent really did try to work it out with me, I couldn’t even face him anymore. It was one of the most difficult times of my life.”

Inducting Nine Inch Nails into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, Iggy Pop spoke of the depth and scope of the band’s music.

“Listening to Nine Inch Nails music – which is so often called ‘industrial’ – I actually hear a lot of funk,” he said. “On top of that is a focused and relentless process of emotional destruction which paints a portrait of pain, pressure and dissatisfaction. It’s the sound of industrial and digital ambition.”

Foo Fighters – who were absent from the ceremony following the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins last month – won three categories: Best Rock Album for their tenth outing, Medicine at Midnight; Best Rock Performance for its opening track, Making a Fire; and Best Rock Song for its third official single, Waiting on a War.

With the latter, Dave Grohl and co beat out Mammoth WVH, who were in the running with Distance, Wolfgang Van Halen's heartfelt tribute to his late father and guitar hero, Eddie.

The Foo Fighters – who were also scheduled to perform at the awards prior to Hawkins' death, but canceled in the wake of the news – had their awards accepted by presenter Jimmy Jam, who offered “prayers to their loved ones”.

Host Trevor Noah echoed the sentiment, saying: “Our thoughts go out to Taylor's family, his friends, the Foo Fighter[s] family, and all of their fans around the globe.” Noah's statement was followed by a tribute video created by the Recording Academy honoring the late drummer.

Hawkins headed up the Recording Academy's televised In Memoriam segment – which also included tributes to ZZ Top's Dusty Hill, The Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts and a host of others – however in a notable exclusion, Slipknot founding drummer Joey Jordison, who died last year, was not mentioned. He was, however, included in an In Memoriam list on the Grammy.com website.

Foo Fighters are no strangers to Grammy wins, sweeping up a total of 15 over the course of their near-30-year career. They began collecting awards in 2000 with their third studio full-length, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, which scooped Best Rock Album that year. They are the first American band in the history of the Grammys to win that many awards.

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards was also a big night for Dream Theater, who beat Deftones, Gojira, Mastodon and Rob Zombie to secure Best Metal Performance for The Alien, the sprawling opener for their 2021 album, A View From the Top of the World.

Accepting the award, guitarist John Petrucci called the experience “absolutely insane”.

“They used to tell us our songs were way too long, we used weird time signatures and there were too many guitar solos,” he said. “In fact, this song is in 17/8, so try to tap your foot to it! But we just won a Grammy so I'm glad we didn't listen... All the Dream Theater fans around the world, you guys rock. We love you. For fans of prog and prog metal, stay true to your art. It's alive and well.”

Other notable guitar-driven acts to secure awards at the Grammys 2022 included country duo Brothers Osborne – who won Best Country Duo/Group Performance for their track Younger Me – and Trent Reznor, though he won his award for the not-especially-guitar-y Soul soundtrack. Silk Sonic – composed of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak – also took home a huge prize: Record of the Year for Leave the Door Open.

In a tearful acceptance speech, Brothers Osborne frontman TJ Osborne said that being accepted by the country genre was “amazing”.

“I never thought that I'd be able to do this professionally because of my sexuality,” he said. “I certainly never thought I would be here on this stage accepting a Grammy after having done something I felt like was going to be life-changing, potentially in a very negative way.” TJ Osborne came out as gay last year.

It was a successful Grammys for blues guitarists, too; Cedric Burnside won Best Traditional Blues Album with I Be Trying, while Christone “Kingfish” Ingram bagged Best Contemporary Blues Album with 662. Elsewhere, St. Vincent won her third Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album with Daddy's Home.

H.E.R., meanwhile, won Best Traditional R&B Performance and put on a fiery medley performance, which culminated in a rendition of Are You Gonna Go My Way? with Lenny Kravitz and Travis Barker.

It’s the second time the pair have linked up to give an Elfman track a fresh lick of sonic paint, after the iconic composer and Nine Inch Nails leader put their heads together for an ultra-industrial reworking of True last year.

And, in very much the same vein as True, this newly released take on Native Intelligence dials everything up to 11. Doubling up the see-sawing intro bass guitar melody with an acoustic guitar signifies an immediate modification to the track, which soon sets the frequency spectrum alight via super-charged cinematic strings and bubbling guitar riffs.

The explosive nature of the track continues across its four-and-a-half-minute run time, courtesy of some souped-up, wall-shaking low-end soundscapes, with Reznor lending a hand in the lead vocal department.

You can check out Native Intelligence in the video below.

When the pair linked up last year, Elfman revealed it had been the first duet collaboration he'd ever done in his life, and said, “To do it with Trent was a real surprise and a treat. He's always been a big inspiration to me, not to mention he has one of my all-time-favorite singing voices.”

It’s the second track from Big Mess to receive a retrospective remix, after the double album arrived in June last year. When it dropped, it was Elfman’s first solo record in 37 years, and one that was born out of the Covid pandemic.

Likening it to “pandora’s box”, Elfman told Guitar World, “Everything was really raw, and I found I was writing much more personal than I was used to, and it was kinda scary in a way but once I got used to getting it off my chest I thought, ‘What the fuck do I care?’ If they’re not into it, they’re not into it. And if they disagree, they disagree. I’m not going to worry about it.”

The new version of Native Intelligence will be joined by the pair’s take on True on the limited-edition Big Mess collector’s edition box set, which also features additional unreleased remixes, access to a behind-the-scenes mini-documentary on the making of the album and more.

To find out more, visit Danny Elfman’s website.

Combining walls of dystopian electric guitar with thumping electronic percussion, cinematic synths and enveloping piano flares, Elfman and Reznor trade unsettling vocal lines between smatterings of ultra-distorted lead guitar.

The track's accompanying music video – which is directed by Aron Johnson, who contributed visual effects to the album version's Sarah Sitkin-directed video – is available to watch now. It combines elements of Sitkin's archived footage with brand-new 3D modeling. Check it out below.

“This is the first duet/collaboration I've ever done in my life, so to do it with Trent was a real surprise and a treat,” says Elfman. “He's always been a big inspiration to me, not to mention he has one of my all-time-favorite singing voices.”

Danny Elfman released Big Mess – his first album in 37 years – on June 11 via ANTI-/Epitaph. Comprising an impressive 18 tracks, the record sees the legendary composer joined by guitarists Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails, Guns N' Roses) and Nili Brosh, drummer Josh Freese (Weezer, The Vandals) and bassist Stu Brooks (Lady Gaga, Dub Trio).

As Elfman explains, the album was almost entirely created during the Covid pandemic.

“Once I began writing, it was like opening a Pandora’s box and I found I couldn’t stop,” he says. “None of it was planned. I had no idea how many songs I would write but from the start it quickly became a two-sided project with heavily contrasting and even conflicting tones.”

He also detailed, in a recent Guitar World interview, how writing the album was a “very, very personal” experience.

“[A] surprise for me when writing was that I was writing more first-person/personal than I used to,” he said. “In the past, I used to do everything pretty sarcastically, and usually from a third-person perspective – from the standpoint of a character and not myself. That's definitely one way to do it, but it is also protective.

“This may have been about the quarantine and isolation, but everything was really raw, and I found I was writing much more personal than I was used to, and it was kinda scary in a way but once I got used to getting it off my chest I thought, ‘What the fuck do I care?’ If they’re not into it, they’re not into it. And if they disagree, they disagree. I’m not going to worry about it.”

Fresh off his dual Oscar wins, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have collaborated with Health on the LA-based noise rockers’ new single, Isn’t Everyone.

The dark, industrial-laced track, which is punctuated by heavily distorted electric guitar stabs, is out today via Loma Vista Recordings. You can check it out above.

Isn’t Everyone was produced by Health and Nine Inch Nails and mixed by Atticus Ross.

As for the sound? “It’s fucking Nine Inch Nails,” Health said in a statement. “That speaks for itself. You don’t need a clever quote to encapsulate it.”

You can purchase or stream Isn’t Everyone here.

The track, written for the biopic Judas and the Black Messiah, has been nominated for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards.

The news comes after Fight For You was shortlisted for the award last month, and follows an incredibly busy stint for H.E.R., including performances on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, displaying her six-string wizardry at the Super Bowl and releasing her debut signature guitar with Fender.

Additionally, Nine Inch Nails main man Trent Reznor, along with his collaborator Atticus Ross, scored a pair of Best Original Score Oscar nominations – one for David Fincher's Mank, and another for Pixar's animated, jazz-inspired Soul. 

They share the latter nod with bandleader and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert musical director Jon Batiste.

She's up for the award in the Best Original Song category for Fight For You, her R&B-flavored contribution to historical drama Judas and the Black Messiah. The track also earned her a spot on the shortlist of the Golden Globes category of the same name.

Also in the running for the award are Janelle Monáe – for Turntables, her Hendrixian composition for All In: The Fight for Democracy – Celeste – for Hear My Voice from The Trial of the Chicago 7 – and Leslie Odom Jr – for his acoustic blinder Speak Now, from One Night in Miami.

Several comedians are also up for the award, including Sacha Baron Cohen for Wuhan Flu from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Will Ferrell and My Marianne for Husavik, from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.

Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor has also earned himself two nominations in the Best Original Score category for his work on biographical drama Mank, and Disney/Pixar's Soul.

Nine other categories have also had their shortlists announced, including International Feature Film, Documentary Feature and Live Action Short Film. You can view the full list of nominations over at the Oscars website.

The Academy Awards are set to be held in-person on April 25, after its initial February date was postponed. The remaining nominations are to be announced March 15. Check out the full list of nominations for Best Original Song and Best Original Score below:

Best Original Song

• Janelle Monáe – Turntables from All In: The Fight for Democracy
• Mary J. Blige – See What You’ve Done from Belly of the Beast
• Sacha Baron Cohen – Wuhan Flu from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
• Will Ferrell and My Marianne – Husavik from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
• John Legend – Never Break from Giving Voice
• Forest Whitaker & Anika Noni Rose – Make It Work from Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
• H.E.R. – Fight For You from Judas and the Black Messiah
• Laura Pausini – lo Sì (Seen) from The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se)
• Emile Mosseri and Han Ye-ri – Rain Song from Minari
• Robert Glasper – Show Me Your Soul from Mr. Soul!
• Christina Aguilera – Loyal Brave True from Mulan
• Charlie Puth – Free from The One and Only Ivan
• Leslie Odom Jr. – Speak Now from One Night in Miami…
• Abraham Marder – Green from Sound of Metal
• Celeste – Hear My Voice from The Trial of the Chicago 7

Best Original Score

• Ammonite
• Blizzard of Souls
• Da 5 Bloods
• The Invisible Man
• Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
• The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se)
• The Little Things
• Mank
• The Midnight Sky
• Minari
• Mulan
• News of the World
• Soul
• Tenet
• The Trial of the Chicago 7

Nine Inch Nails have premiered "God Break Down the Door," the first single from their upcoming album, Bad Witch. You can listen to it above.

The band premiered the new song today on Zane Lowe's radio show on Beats 1 on Apple Music. Reznor also sat down with Lowe for an extensive interview, which covered everything from "God Break Down the Door" to the band's unique new, in-person ticket sale policy.

In the interview, Reznor said the song came from "Seeing the untouched baritone tenor and alto sax that are sitting there [in the studio.] They’re there because they remind me that I can't play them as well as I used to be able to. For 20 years, I've been saying I’m going of really get my technique back because it would be fun to do. And there they sit taunting me in the corner."

"We pulled them out and we just started fucking around really, led with Atticus arranging," he continued. "I was just kind of going, an hour performance kind of turned into this thing that felt like we hadn't been there before and that started to reveal a whole different character. The space changed and then we felt motivated. When it came time to sing I was really just trying things out, just to see. I never had the courage to sing like that, I didn't know I could sing."

You can check out the full interview—if you have an Apple Music account—below.

Bad Witch is set for a June 22 release. You can preorder it right here, and check out its tracklist, and the band's full itinerary, below.

Bad Witch:

• 01 Shit Mirror
• 02 Ahead of Ourselves
• 03 Play the Goddamned Part
• 04 God Break Down the Door
• 05 I’m Not From This World
• 06 Over and out

Nine Inch Nails 2018 Tour Dates:

06-13 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-15 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-16 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-22 London, England - Meltdown Festival
06-24 London, England - Royal Albert Hall
06-25 Paris, France - Olympia
06-27 Amsterdam, Netherlands - AFAS
06-29 St. Gallen, Switzerland - Open Air Fest
06-30 Prague, Czech Republic - Aerodrome Festival
07-02 Berlin, Germany - Zitadelle
07-04 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
07-06 Belfort , France - Eurokennes Festival
07-08 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter Festival
07-09 Montreux, Switzerland - Montreux Jazz Festival
07-12 Lisbon, Portugal - NOS Alive Festival
07-14 Madrid, Spain - Mad Cool Festival
08-14 Bangkok, Thailand - Moonstar Studio
08-17 Tokyo, Japan - Sonic Mania Festival
08-19 Osaka, Japan - Summer Sonic Festival
09-13 Phoenix, AZ - Comerica Theatre ^
09-14 Phoenix, AZ - Comerica Theatre ^
09-18 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks ^
09-19 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks ^
09-22 San Antonio, TX - River City Rockfest
09-24 Memphis, TN - Orpheum Theater ^
09-26 Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre ^
09-27 Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre ^
09-29 Nashville, TN - Ascend Amphitheater ^
10-09 Washington, DC - The Anthem ^
10-13 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall ^
10-14 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall ^
10-19 Boston, MA - Boch Center ^
10-20 Boston, MA - Boch Center ^
10-22 Detroit, MI - Fox Theater ^
10-23 Detroit, MI - Fox Theater ^
10-25 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom ^
10-26 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom ^
11-23 New Orleans, LA - Saenger Theatre ^
11-24 New Orleans, LA - Saenger Theatre ^
11-27 Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory ^
11-28 Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory ^
12-03 San Francisco, CA - Bill Graham Civic Auditorium ^
12-07 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-08 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-11 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-12 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^

Nine Inch Nails have announced a new EP, Bad Witch, and an extensive tour.

The new EP is out June 22, and follows 2016's Not the Actual Events and 2017's Add Violence. You can examine its tracklist below.

The band's fall trek through North America—which the band are calling the Cold and Black Infinite tour—will feature The Jesus and Mary Chain as openers. Notably, tickets for the shows will be sold only in person at venue boxes in what the band are calling "The Physical World Presale."

"The promise of a world made better by computers and online connectivity has failed us in many ways, particularly when it comes to ticketing," the band said in a statement about the policy on their website. "Everything about the process sucks and everyone loses except the reseller. We’ve decided to try something different that will also likely suck, but in a different way. We’re hoping many of you will be happy with the results, while some may do what they always do and bitch about it."

"You (an actual human being) show up at the box office, interact with the ticket seller (another actual human being) and purchase up to four tickets that will actually be handed to you on the spot," the statement continues. "The tickets will not be available online or anywhere else before or during that day. All seats (including the best seats) will be available first come, first serve. You may actually encounter other actual human beings with similar interests likely wearing black clothing during the process and potentially interact with them."

You can check out the band's full itinerary below. Preorder Bad Witch here.

Bad Witch:

• 01 Shit Mirror
• 02 Ahead of Ourselves
• 03 Play the Goddamned Part
• 04 God Break Down the Door
• 05 I’m Not From This World
• 06 Over and out

Nine Inch Nails 2018 Tour Dates:

06-13 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-15 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-16 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
06-22 London, England - Meltdown Festival
06-24 London, England - Royal Albert Hall
06-25 Paris, France - Olympia
06-27 Amsterdam, Netherlands - AFAS
06-29 St. Gallen, Switzerland - Open Air Fest
06-30 Prague, Czech Republic - Aerodrome Festival
07-02 Berlin, Germany - Zitadelle
07-04 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
07-06 Belfort , France - Eurokennes Festival
07-08 Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter Festival
07-09 Montreux, Switzerland - Montreux Jazz Festival
07-12 Lisbon, Portugal - NOS Alive Festival
07-14 Madrid, Spain - Mad Cool Festival
08-14 Bangkok, Thailand - Moonstar Studio
08-17 Tokyo, Japan - Sonic Mania Festival
08-19 Osaka, Japan - Summer Sonic Festival
09-13 Phoenix, AZ - Comerica Theatre ^
09-14 Phoenix, AZ - Comerica Theatre ^
09-18 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks ^
09-19 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks ^
09-22 San Antonio, TX - River City Rockfest
09-24 Memphis, TN - Orpheum Theater ^
09-26 Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre ^
09-27 Atlanta, GA - Fox Theatre ^
09-29 Nashville, TN - Ascend Amphitheater ^
10-09 Washington, DC - The Anthem ^
10-13 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall ^
10-14 New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall ^
10-19 Boston, MA - Boch Center ^
10-20 Boston, MA - Boch Center ^
10-22 Detroit, MI - Fox Theater ^
10-23 Detroit, MI - Fox Theater ^
10-25 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom ^
10-26 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom ^
11-23 New Orleans, LA - Saenger Theatre ^
11-24 New Orleans, LA - Saenger Theatre ^
11-27 Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory ^
11-28 Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory ^
12-03 San Francisco, CA - Bill Graham Civic Auditorium ^
12-07 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-08 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-11 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^
12-12 Los Angeles, CA - Palladium ^

^ with the Jesus and Mary Chain

Last week, Nine Inch Nails announced a new EP, entitled ADD VIOLENCE.

With their announcement came the release of "Less Than," an ADD VIOLENCE track that, with its warped New Wave synths and hard-driving chorus, brings the band's heyday to mind.

Now, the group has unveiled a second track from the EP, which is set to drop this Friday. The nightmarish, dirge-like "This Isn't The Place" is as confrontational and twisted as "Less Than" is accessible and straightforward. You can give it a listen below.

As we reported earlier this month, King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew recently quit Nine Inch Nails, posting the following note via Facebook:

"hey folks, before this goes too far let me say this: I greatly respect trent and the music he makes. no one is at fault. we both agreed it just was not working. I’m sorry to disappoint anyone. that really hurts. but NIN will do an amazing show and I am back where I belong: creating FLUX."

Belew was the second member of NIN to quit in less than a month; bassist Eric Avery announced his departure May 15, saying he felt "overwhelmed" by "the intensity Nails demands."

Speaking recently to CBS, Reznor came clean about the shifting lineup, admitting it had been "disruptive."

"You can spend a lot of time hypothesising, imagining and projecting what it’s gonna be with this chemistry and this recipe of people in a room playing music, and in reality it rarely is that," he said.

"It's felt like a wrench in the works at times, but at the same time it's made me rethink a lot of how we put this together, and I think where we're ending up at is a place that’s much truer to what Nine Inch Nails should be and better in the long run," he added.

The new Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, will be released September 3. It was produced by Reznor, Alan Moulder and Atticus Ross. In a statement about the album, Reznor wrote: "I've been less than honest about what I've really been up to lately. For the last year I've been secretly working non-stop with Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder on a new, full-length Nine Inch Nails record, which I am happy to say is finished and frankly fucking great."

Hesitation Marks Track Listing:

• 'The Eater of Dreams'
• 'Copy of A'
• 'Came Back Haunted'
• 'Find My Way'
• 'All Time Low'
• 'Disappointed'
• 'Everything'
• 'Satellite'
• 'Various Methods of Escape'
• 'Running'
• 'I Would for You'
• 'In Two'
• 'While I’m Still Here'
• 'Black Noise'

Check out "Came Back Haunted," the first song to be released from Hesitation Marks, the upcoming new album by Nine Inch Nails.

Hesitation Marks will be released September 3 by Columbia.

“I’ve been less than honest about what I’ve really been up to lately," said NIN frontman Trent Reznor in a press release. "For the last year, I’ve been secretly working non-stop with Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder on a new, full-length Nine Inch Nails record, which I am happy to say is finished and frankly fucking great.

"This is the real impetus and motivation behind the decision to assemble a new band and tour again. My forays into film, HTDA and other projects really stimulated me creatively and I decided to focus that energy on taking Nine Inch Nails to a new place. Here we go!”

The current touring lineup of Nine Inch Nails features Reznor, Adrian Belew of King Crimson and Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv, as well as previous NIN collaborators Robin Finck, Alessandro Cortini and Ilan Rubin.

Besides the new song, Reznor & Co. also have announced a 31-date North American tour that kicks off September 28 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Tickets go on sale June 14 through Live Nation. Be sure to check out the complete itinerary below the Soundcloud player.

"Came Back Haunted" is already available on iTunes. Stay tuned for more Nine Inch Nails updates!

Nine Inch Nails Tour Dates:

• 9/28 St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center
• 9/30 Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
• 10/1 St. Louis, MO – Chaifetz Arena
• 10/3 Montreal, QC – Centre Bell
• 10/4 Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre
• 10/5 Cleveland, OH – Wolstein Center
• 10/7 Auburn Hills, MI – The Palace of Auburn Hills
• 10/8 Pittsburgh, PA – Petersen Events Center
• 10/11 Boston, MA – TD Garden
• 10/14 Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center
• 10/15 Newark, NJ – Prudential Center
• 10/18 Washington, DC – Verizon Center
• 10/19 University Park, PA – Bryce Jordan Center
• 10/21 Raleigh, NC – PNC Arena
• 10/22 Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena
• 10/24 Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
• 10/30 Sunrise, FL – BB&T Center
• 10/31 Orlando, FL – Amway Center
• 11/5 San Antonio, TX – AT&T Center
• 11/8 Los Angeles, CA – Staples Center
• 11/9 Phoenix, AZ – US Airways Center
• 11/11 El Paso, TX – Don Haskins Center
• 11/13 Broomfield, CO – 1stBank Center
• 11/15 Las Vegas, NV – The Joint
• 11/16 Las Vegas, NV – The Joint
• 11/18 Portland, OR – Rose Garden Arena
• 11/19 Spokane, WA – Spokane Arena
• 11/21 Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena
• 11/22 Seattle, WA – KeyArena
• 11/24 Edmonton, AB – Rexall Place
• 11/25 Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome

Trent Reznor has announced that former Inch Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck is back in the band.

"I am proud to announce that the tour lineup now includes the incredible Robin Finck," wrote Reznor on the band's Facebook page. "The addition of Robin to the mix of players I’ve assembled makes this band incredibly powerful and versatile. We are deep in the rehearsal process and it feels exciting and great to be back at this. Lots of information, surprises and sweat headed your way. Stay tuned!"

Last week, Nine Inch Nails bassist Eric Avery announced said he was leaving the band because he was feeling a bit "overwhelmed" after a recent tour with Garbage.

"It's with very mixed emotions I tell you all that I'm pulling out of NIN," wrote Avery, a founding member of Jane's Addiction. "I know. It's been a tough call and I don't know if it's the right one. But I really want to focus on my musical life here in LA, on film work in particular. As the tour dates kept growing … I just got overwhelmed."

Finck can be heard on several Nine Inch Nails albums, including Closer to God (1994), Further Down the Spiral (1995), And All That Could Have Been (2002), The Downward Spiral (2004) and The Slip (2008).

Nine Inch Nails are scheduled to play Lollapalooza in Chicago and Jay-Z's Made In America Festival in Philadelphia this summer, with more tour dates to be announced soon.

Nine Inch Nails have posted a documentary about their Self Destruct tour, and you can check it out on the Vimeo player below.

The 75-minute film chronicles the band's tour from 1994 to 1996 and features appearances from David Bowie and Marilyn Manson. The footage was originally only available on 1997's Closure video.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor recently announced that NIN are alive and kicking in 2013. Tours are planned for this summer and fall. The new lineup includes Reznor, Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction, Adrian Belew of King Crimson and Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv, as well as previous NIN collaborators Alessandro Cortini and Ilan Rubin.

"I was working with Adrian Belew on some musical ideas, which led to some discussion on performing, which led to some beard-scratching, which (many steps later) led to the decision to re-think the idea of what Nine Inch Nails could be, and the idea of playing a show," Reznor said. "Calls were made to some friends, lots of new ideas were discussed, and a show was booked - which led to another, which somehow led to a lot of shows.

"The band is reinventing itself from scratch and will be comprised of Eric Avery, Adrian Belew, Alessandro Cortini, Josh Eustis, Ilan Rubin, and me. The first shows will begin this summer, followed by a full-on arena tour of the US this fall, and lots of other dates worldwide to follow through 2014."

Nine Inch Nails: "Closure" part one: Self Destruct (1997) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

Dave Grohl's new album, Sound City: Real To Reel, won't be released until next week, but you can check out one of the tracks, an instrumental called "Mantra," in the video below.

The video, which was posted to YouTube yesterday, shows Grohl (in drumming mode) in his studio with two members of his Sound City Players ensemble, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme on bass and Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor on keyboards.

Sound City: Real To Reel will be out March 12, courtesy of Roswell Records (Listen to the entire album here). The album is the soundtrack to the Sound City documentary, which is already available. For more information, check out the film's website, soundcitymovie.com.

Grohl's Sound City Players will perform at SXSW March 14.

How to Destroy Angels have released a dark new video for their track "Ice Age," off the group's new An Omen EP. Watch the John Hillcoat-directed clip below.

The band — which features Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig and longtime collaborators Rob Sheridan and Atticus Ross — are set to follow up their latest EP with a full-length album slated for a 2013 release. Reznor has also stated in recent interviews that something will likely happen in the near future with Nine Inch Nails, who have been largely dormant in recent years while Reznor has explored other projects.

It was also recently revealed in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session that he was "helping out" with a track for the new Queens of the Stone Age album, which will feature Dave Grohl on drums.

When asked what he was working on currently, Reznor responded, "A number of things. Tweaking some things for the HTDA full LP, helping Josh out on a new QOTSA track, working with [NIN tour producer] Roy [Bennett], starting rehearsals for two bands."

Trent Reznor has worked with QOTSA in the past, contributing to the title cut of the band's last album, Era Vulgaris. The track would only be released on the UK version of the album, as well as a promotional CD called You Know What You Did. Reznor is also is no stranger to collaborating with Grohl, who played drums on the Nine Inch Nails' 2005 album, With Teeth.

Reznor's How to Destroy Angels project released their new EP, An Open, earlier this week, and have plans for a full-length record (mentioned above) to be released in the Spring.

As for new Nine Inch Nails material, Reznor seemed confident in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that something would happen with his primary project sooner rather than later. "All signs point to yes," he said, reassuringly. "There will be new music. There are some things in the works."

The prolific multi-instrumentalist has since won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his motion picture score of David Fincher's The Social Network, partnered again with Fincher for the score of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and recorded two EPs with his new project, How to Destroy Angels, which features frequent collaborators Rob Sheridan and Atticus Ross, along with Reznor's new wife Mariqueen Maandig.

With a new EP out this month from HTDA and a full-length album on the way for 2013, Nine Inch Nails fans have been been left wondering if Reznor's primary project might be done for good. But fortunately for NIN diehards, Reznor has cleared things up in a new Rolling Stone interview in regards to the possibility of new music from the band: "All signs point to yes," he said, reassuringly. "There will be new music. There are some things in the works."

More surprisingly, perhaps, is that Reznor wouldn't rule out the possibility of more live shows for the Nine Inch Nails. "Yeah, if it feels right, it's a possibility," he told the magazine. "I never said that that wasn't going to happen, just that it couldn't go on as it was. Having a few years doing other things, I've enjoyed [them] and I'm enjoying doing How to Destroy Angels, and there will be a place for stuff that falls in the Nine Inch Nails column of things. It's a different kind of work."

Read the full feature here.

How to Destroy Angels' new EP, An Omen, is out November 13.

Dave Grohl has released another teaser video for his upcoming Sound City movie, a documentary he's both directing and producing about the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California.

In the below clip, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, John Fogerty and Butch Vig all talk about what made Sound City — and in particular the studio's Neve 8028 recording console — so special.

"The Neve has incredible character," said Vig, "probably too much character."

Grohl's directorial debut about "America’s greatest unsung recording studio" still has no firm release date, but is tentatively expected later this year. For more on the film, check out soundcitymovie.com.

Nine Inch Nails mastermind and Oscar-winning film composer Trent Reznor has written the theme song for the upcoming video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

"There is a lot of reservation and angst and sense of loss and regret and anger bubbling under the surface," Reznor told USA Today of his latest soundtrack work. "So it didn't make sense to have a gung-ho patriotic feeling kind of theme song. It has to feel weighty."

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is set for a November 13 release.

Perhaps even more interesting for fans is the fact that there's plenty of new music coming from Reznor in the near future.

"We have a finished album," Reznor said of How to Destroy Angels, his band with his wife Mariqueen Maandiq and Atticus Ross. "It's been finished for a little while. We're doing a little bit of tweaks on it. The record will be out soon."

Reznor also promises that new Nine Inch Nails music is in the works and that the band is in its "gestation period."

Trent Reznor's new band How To Destroy Angels -- which also includes his new wife Mariqueen Maandig and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross -- will release their debut album in early 2012.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Reznor said: "[We are] finishing our full-length record, which has fully matured our sound into something that is very unique. I can’t wait for that record to come out, actually probably [in the] first quarter of next year."

The band released a self-titled EP back in 2010, but according to Reznor, fans should expect their sound to have matured greatly since then.

"When we did the first EP, it was the result of six weeks in the studio, just kind of seeing what happened," Reznor said. "We didn’t have a lot of time to explore that much and figure out what our sound is. It felt very close to other projects I’ve been involved in or direct influences, let’s say. [This] sounds like How to Destroy Angels now, instead of sounding like other stuff, so I’m proud of that and I’m excited to unleash it into the wild here."

You can read more here.

December 9 saw the release of the soundtrack for the upcoming film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo written by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Among the tracks is a collaboration between Rezor and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song."

While the song debuted online months back, there's now a video for the track -- an eerie clip put together by director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network) for the film's title sequence. You can check out the video below.

After turning his attention to film scoring for a couple of years -- and winning a freaking Oscar in the process -- Trent Reznor will focus on Nine Inch Nails in the new year.

Speaking to The Sun, Reznor dispelled any rumors that Nine Inch Nails was done, saying, "Nine Inch Nails is not dead by any means, but all the touring and record writing has been thrown off for a little bit. I highly expect that to be the focus of 2012 in terms of writing and we may see a full-length release even."

And indeed you can't criticize Reznor for making poor career moves. The NIN frontman has made sure his band -- along with Radiohead -- has become the epitome of a band working in a post-label world. Reinvention isn't an idea that Reznor had all on his own though, it's a cue he takes from one of his heroes, David Bowie.

"It started to feel like if I didn't force myself into a change I would regret it," said Reznor. "It's a fear of not wanting to try things because you're in a comfort zone. I always think about my hero David Bowie and his fearlessness to destroy something that isn't ready to break yet and start something new. He'd throw out an identity, confuse his audience and it's a great risk career-wise. But he had the balls and didn't milk it out to the last drop."

Nine Inch Nails last full-length album was The Slip, which was released back in 2008.

Reznor and Atticus Ross released their official soundtrack to the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earlier today.

Oscar-winning film composer -- and also Nine Inch Nails head honcho -- Trent Reznor has announced the release date for his upcoming film score for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The soundtrack will be released on December 2 through Null in North America, and through Mute Records overseas.

Trent Reznor and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross won an Oscar and Golden Globe for their film score to last year's The Social Network, which was directed by David Fincher. Fincher is also directing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The cover art for the album was also revealed on Nine Inch Nails' official website and can be seen below.

With Nine Inch Nails on ice at the moment, NIN fans can at least be reassured that Trent Reznor is keeping busy making new music. Most of the new music we've heard from Reznor lately has come in the form of film scores -- one of which, The Social Network, won a freakin' Oscar -- so it's no surprise that the new music we're bringing you today comes from his latest film project, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You can check out the trailer below.

Reznor once again collaborated with his longtime partner in crime Atticus Ross for the David Fincher-helmed adaption of the popular novel by Stieg Larsson.

An earlier red band trailer for the film also featured Trent working with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O on a cover of Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song," which you can listen to here.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has long had a love-hate relationship with Twitter, with his account often going dormant for months on end. Not so today, with Reznor initially posting a message inviting fans to use his few Spotify invites, then tearing into his old record label, Interscope/Universal, for their recent reissue of Nine Inch Nails' debut album, Pretty Hate Machine.

"NIN fans, don't waste your money on this version of [Pretty Hate Machine] that was just released," he wrote. His next post added, "A record label bullshit move repackaging the old version. Ignore please."

Nine Inch Nails released a remastered version of Pretty Hate Machine this past fall featuring new artwork from long-time NIN art director Rob Sheridan.

Reznor has been a particularly vocal critic of the record industry, including how his own labels have handled his music. After seeing the prices of his albums in Australia, Reznor told his Australian fans to "steal" the music during a live concert. It's also widely believed that the leak of Nine Inch Nails' last studio album for a major label, Year Zero, was perpetrated by Reznor himself.

Nine Inch Nails have since successfully released two albums, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip (which was offered as a free download, and only later saw a physical release), without any record label help.

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has recently recorded a cover version of the Led Zeppelin classic, "The Immigrant Song," with help from Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O. The song was recorded for Reznor's score of the upcoming movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. You can listen to Trent's version of "The Immigrant Song" in the video below (Red Band trailer, may be NSFW.)

The NIN frontman, who recently won his first Oscar for the film score for The Social Network, is providing the score for the movie based on the popular Stieg Larson novel. This is his second collaboration with director David Fincher (Fight Club.)

Further details of Reznor collaborators on the score have not yet been revealed.