Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Nine Inch Nails
John Crawford
Last year, Trent Reznor promised a new Nine Inch Nails project would arrive before 2016 ended and today (Dec. 16) he seems ready to make good on those words. NIN will release a new EP called Not the Actual Events on Dec. 23, in addition to re-issuing all major titles from its back catalog.
“It’s an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make,” Reznor announced, speaking on the new EP. That “we” refers to him and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross, who’s referred to as an “official bandmate” of Reznor’s in the press release that broke today’s news. It calls Not the Actual Events “an unexpected left turn” from NIN’s most recent album (2013’s Hesitation Marks), released in EP form since that turned out to be “the proper length to tell that story.” It’s also described as sounding “unrecognizable from their current film work,” which includes scoring Patriots Day, a Mark Wahlberg-starring project about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing due for wide theatrical release in Jan. 2017.
And onto those re-issues: on Dec. 22, Nine Inch Nails is releasing a remastered 4xLP version of its 1999 album The Fragile, which fills out its four records with a whopping 37 bonus tracks. Reznor commented on The Fragile:
The Fragile occupies a very interesting and intimate place in my heart. I was going through a turbulent time in my life when making it and revisiting it has become a form of therapy for me. As an experiment, I removed all the vocals from the record and found it became a truly changed experience that worked on a different yet compelling level. The Fragile: Deviations 1 represents Atticus and I embellishing the original record with a number of tracks from those sessions we didn’t use before. The result paints a complimentary but different picture we wanted to share.
“Definitive editions of all the major NIN releases on vinyl” are also on the way, including 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine and 1992’s Broken. These titles vary in release date and availability; find all details here. Reznor continued:
We want to present the catalog as it was intended to be, with no compromises. That means a careful remastering of the audio from the original sources, a painstaking recreation of the artwork, pristine materials, some surprises and an insane attention to detail that you probably won’t notice…but it matters to us. No extra bullshit and gimmicks — the ‘real’ records in their truest form.
Reznor has not yet shared any music from the new EP, but fans will have plenty of NIN excitement to dig into before long. Below, find the album artwork for Not the Actual Events.