Nine Inch Nails is a Cleveland, OH, USA, industrial rock band that was formed in 1988 by Trent Reznor, the only constant member of the band. He’s generally credited for popularizing the genre known as “industrial rock” with both his releases and dark, theatrical music videos.
Born Michael Trent Reznor, he was raised by his maternal grandparents in Mercer, Pennsylvania, USA. Reznor took up piano at the age of five and in high school took up the tuba and saxophone. In the early to mid-80s, Trent played with various synthpop and new wave groups such as Exotic Birds and Option 30 before beginning his solo project.
As a member of Exotic Birds, he appeared in the Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett film Light of Day. He also was mentioned on local TV as a proponent of electronic music in general. Before the 1989 release of NIN’s first album, ‘Pretty Hate Machine’, he worked for Right Track Studio as a handyman heavily interested in recording technology. Both the name of Reznor’s band and the title of his second single, “Head Like a Hole”, came from remarks by Al Jourgensen of Ministry, Reznor’s biggest influence.
Nine Inch Nails has issued eight major albums, which have generally received both critical and commercial acclaim. Historically, NIN releases have been assigned a “Halo” index number. For example, the album ‘With Teeth’ is also known as Halo 19. With the inclusion of the ‘Broken’ EP, the band’s primary releases are:
1. ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ (1989)
2. ‘Broken’ EP (1992)
3. ‘The Downward Spiral’ (1994)
4. ‘The Fragile (Left)’ / ‘’The Fragile (Right)’ (1999)
5. ‘With Teeth’ (2005)
6. ‘Year Zero’ (2007)
7. ‘Ghosts I-IV’ (2008)
8. ‘The Slip’ (2008)
9. ‘Hesitation Marks’ (2013)
Nine Inch Nails has also produced a number of EP’s, remixes, and provided contributions to various movie soundtracks, including ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’, ‘The Crow’, ‘Natural Born Killers’, ‘Lost Highway’, and ‘Tetsuo: The Bullet Man’. Trent Reznor additionally provided the soundtrack for the massively popular id Software game Quake, a release inspired by ambient music. His team up with Atticus Ross resulted in the critically praised soundtrack to the film ‘The Social Network’, with the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross duo winning an Oscar for Best Original Score at the 83rd Academy Awards
In 2002, a live album (their second live release, the first being the video ‘Closure Documentary’) entitled ‘And All That Could Have Been’ was released on DVD & CD. The Deluxe version of the CD came packaged with a mini album called ‘Still’. That release featured several previously released songs in a stripped down, near-acoustic format along with several other new compositions.
