A year ago this week, Trent Reznor tweeted, “New NIN coming in 2016. Other stuff, too.” When reminded of this tweet now in a new interview with Rolling Stone, though, he’s coy. “Those words did come out of my mouth, didn’t they?” he says bluntly. Then he feigns surprise. “Oh, yeah, it’s December, isn’t it?” He pauses. “Just wait and see what happens.”
When asked about the mood of the forthcoming Nine Inch Nails record – whether it arrives before New Year’s or not – he wants people to be patient. “That will be part of the reveal,” he says. “I don’t want to spoil it. If I’m interested in a film, I prefer not to watch the trailer. We live in overstimulated times.”
He also discussed his recent collaboration with Atticus Ross titled “A Minute To Breath.”
“It was an uncomfortable and risky track to work on, because it could veer easily into eye-roll territory,” he says. “At the end of the day we knew that if it sucked, it goes with all the others in the vault that no one’s ever going to hear. But how does one write a love song about the planet without groans? And that’s what was intriguing about it: Could we pull it off? And right up to the last second of sending it to Fisher, I was saying, ‘I don’t know, man. I don’t know,’ mostly because I was afraid. I reminded myself, after a couple of years not touring and spending time in the hot seat, that it always feels uncomfortable if you’re doing it right. That doesn’t mean the risks are always good. But in this case I felt alive again. I felt that uncomfortable feeling like I’m naked on stage and not sure that I want to be.”
