It’s hard to believe that Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails have been around for 20 years. Though the “band” is mainly Trent Reznor (at least on record), it’s still amazing he’s been going strong for such a long time.

Billboard.com has a great retrospective piece titled “20 Years of Nine Inch Nails” that details each important phase of Trent Reznor/NIN’s career. The piece covers everything from Trent Reznor getting his first job working in a studio to the release of his newest album “The Slip” and everything in between. Of particular interest is the period between “The Downward Spiral” and “The Fragile” when Reznor was starting to develop a serious drug problem.

“On July 1, NIN cancelled its London Arena show, purportedly because of the drummer’s stomach flu. Years later, Reznor would reveal the real reason: He had overdosed on heroin, one particular drug he had always denied doing. The tour ended the following week, and Reznor disappeared for five years.”

For any NIN fans, this retrospective is well-worth checking out and also features a NIN Chart History, NIN Essential Videos and NIN Essential Recordings list.

Source.

In a surprising move, Nine Inch Nails have posted access to a free download of their new album “The Slip” via www.nin.com. The band had been posting on their official site that a surpirse was due for Monday, May 5th.

The album is 10 tracks and is available in a variety of formats, including MP3 as well as high-quality lossless, all of which are free. Physical copies of the album will be released in July of this year through traditional distribution methods.

“A statement on the site from frontman Trent Reznor says simply, “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.”

Demand for the music has been high, as nin.com slowed to a crawl after the free download had been posted.

Personally, I think this is a great idea, and more importantly a great way to show appreciation to all the NIN fans out there. Nine Inch Nails is a band that has been heavily supported by its fans since the early 90’s. I am going to download a copy of the album for myself, give it some listens and post a review here. I’m curious to see if the album is similar to Nine Inch Nails last release, “Ghosts” with lots of ambient and guitar effects, or if it’s similar to their earlier material, it might be neither.

Source - Billboard.com

As many people probably know by now…Nine Inch Nails has self-released, (via the internet) a new 36 track instrumental album. In a fashion similar to Radiohead’s pioneering approach, whereby the band’s website offered users a choice of paying any amount they want for the album, or nothing at all. Nine Inch Nails however, offered the entire album as a $5 download through file-sharing program bit torrent, a $10 2 CD set, 9 free songs from the album or various special edition packages ranging from $75 to $300 for an ultra-deluxe limited edition package.

According to Nine Inch Nails official website, the idea for the album was to just go about an organic writing process. The process was to sort of improvise with a variety of musical instruments, including guitar effects, bass synths, etc…The result isn’t one you’d usually expect from Nine Inch Nails. I’d say it runs the gamut of really cool textures and sounds to something you’d never really want to listen to on a regular basis. Although it should be noted that this sort of thing would’ve never been possible under a major label. So it’s cool to see Trent Reznor branching out and really doing some more weird and unique things musically.

The album also reportedly went on to pull in $1.6 million in the first week alone, as the sales go to direct to the band/Trent Reznor.

Source