Trent Reznor - Nine Inch Nails - Interview - 2011

It’s impossible to tell if the band have actually arrived on stage. The Glasgow Academy is dense with smoke, and you can just make out a silhouette clutching the mic stand: "Hello pigs". Lights flash, the music starts, and the dark spectres throw themselves soul-first into a two hour set of catharsis personified - the smoke subsiding slowly to reveal the cast of this theatre macabre. Onstage Nine Inch Nails' great architect, Trent Reznor still throws his guitar and the mic stand around and rages his despondent lyrics into the microphone. But something is wrong: Trent is happy. Through the smiles, playful bandmate interplay and his tone while talking to the crowd, the dark cloud that has for so long hung over Trent's head has gone. For over a decade the infamous misanthrope has barely said more than ‘thank you’ to each crowd he’s entertained; but tonight he is baiting the crowd with a mischievous grin slapped across his equine chops: “Manchester sucked last night, but you guys are fucking awesome! Show me you’re better than those fuckers!” Is it just tonight? Or has he undergone a permanent misery-bypass?

The next morning when we meet Trent at his hotel to talk about the new album, 'Year Zero', our fears are confirmed: Trent is happy.

It usually takes over half a decade for a new Nine Inch Nails album to surface. But not this time. May 2005 saw the release of 'With Teeth' long-awaited follow up to 1999's, The Fragile': the helplessness and despair of drug addiction committed to tape. Now, both clean and sober, Reznor is on a roll. Having woken up from a deep dependency, he has found that the creative juices are still flowing. Now, in under two years, 'With Teeth's successor, 'Year Zero' is available to buy.

Two years ago when Hammer spoke to the newly drug-free Trent, he was in good health, but his manner still painted a picture of an anxious sociophobe: stilted sentences said uneasily with little eye-contact. Today the classically-trained musician is the relaxed and sunny antithesis of his former self.

Explaining when and how he started this new album, Trent admits that it has a lot to do with boredom: that while "It's fun to play the show, the rest of the day is just waiting around.” So he starting working with the 'limitation' that all he had was a laptop, and “some cool stuff started happening."

After the With Teeth tour, he decided against taking a break. He started expanding the ideas he’d created using only his laptop, and the lyrical concept was born. Trent had just moved to Los Angeles - an incongruous choice for the renowned antisocial, who had previously moved to New Orleans to isolate himself.

"I didn't go to LA for the culture," he says smiling a wry smile. "I moved there to be around my peers. The fake tits and celebrity bullshit is all there, but it's not all there is there. You don't see me out, or see pictures of me shopping. I'm repulsed by it to be quite frank. I needed to be around people who do what I do to make the whole 'Year Zero' thing happen."With everything going so swimmingly, Trent moved from his new home to a remote and “creepy” house in the Californian hills to write build lyrics out of his concept. Disappearing into the woodwork for a while, the isolation allowed him to escape the usual urban distractions, and Trent focussed. After three months on the far side of nowhere, all that remained was the odd nip and tuck, and 'Year Zero' was road-ready. The new record was not to be simply another album of gloomy introspection, but the first of two albums: a Big Picture political narrative about a dystopian future in which a selfish populous abuse their world and have to suffer the consequences, and an illusive force called, The Presence.

"Oh hey, we can talk about that", Trent says before addressing the label person charged with keeping his schedule running on time, "Give me five more minutes, ok?" Reaching the end of our allotted interview time, we mention something that he’s keen to talk about, and he extends our interview. Shocked that the socially anxious recluse would want to spend more time being probed, we sit down again.

The dark-haired singer explains that the main purpose of the record was to call attention to the totalitarian political climate and how we are destroying ourselves and our planet.

"It was an epiphany of sorts. And it revolves around sobriety," he explains as if describing a toaster. "[When you're an addict] you feel like your problems are the biggest problems in the world. I’m not saying I can change the world, but now I feel like it’s my duty as a human to do try and do something."Trent has admitted that when he quit drugs he was worried that he wouldn't be able to write again, but that 'With Teeth' proved he could. Does his lyrical choice of a fictional concept suggest he no longer has personal demons to confront?

During our conversation he says, "I was writing fiction for the first time," before quickly reassuring us that, "it's clearly fiction. I couldn't write another 'Downward Spiral' because that would be lying."

So is 'the concept' a substitute for personal demon-exorcising? Do you have any demons still left to be banished? If not, like Korn's Jonathan Davis, will you tap back to emotions that are fast fading in the rear-view mirror? "This is a good question because…" He stops for a few seconds. "Let me just think about this for a sec."

Again he pauses. The silence starts to feel uncomfortable.

"I'll just keep my mouth shut.

"Really?"

"I know you're baiting me," he says smiling warmly. "I know how Korn did their last record," he starts, letting his guard down. "I know where a lot of [Jonathan Davis'] lyrics came from - because he didn't write them.

"Trent is referring to the song-writers and producers Linda Perry, The Matrix and his own friend and colleague, Atticus Ross who worked on Korn's 2005 album, 'See You On The Other Side'.

"When the day comes that I have to hire the flavour of the day to write my records for me so I can sound like I used to, just to make money… stick a fork in me.

”Trent becomes animated as he asserts that whether or not you like Nine Inch Nails, loved or hated this or that record, he made them all for the right reasons: “because it means more to me than anything else in my life. I can sleep well at night – when I can sleep – knowing that I always kept that pure. I'll never put making money ahead of that.

"It is hard to believe that 'Year Zero's subject matter is as separated from real-life as Trent wants not only us, but himself to believe. It’s easy to draw parallels between 'Year Zero' and Trent's own story: abuse of body/planet, an ambivalent force against which you have no power, be it addiction or The Presence, and having to cope with the aftermath. 'Year Zero' is far more autobiographical than Trent realises.

While he says that it was a conscious decision not to let the words just pour out him, he also says that he “didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking, 'Am I writing as a character?'” adding “It's just what came out.

"But nothing is ever truly fictional: you can only write what you know."For anything to be believable it has to have 'you' in it," says Trent, indirectly denying our veiled suggestion that Year Zero is as much about his life as it is the futuristic setting of 0015. ‘Year Zero’ is still about Trent Reznor.

Trent is happy. Not in a 'cat that got the cream' way, but in the way that only someone who has returned from the brink of auto-extinction, can enjoy. And you can hear it in the album: it doesn't have the darkness that all previous output has had.

"And I don't have the darkness," he says in a manner that proves his point. "I'm not ready to jump out that window. And a few years ago I was.”When he wrote the 'Downward Spiral' the demons were closing in on him. When he wrote 'Broken' he thought his musical career was over. During 'The Fragile' he was trying to fight his way out of addiction, and lying to himself about it. Each album is an accurate picture of where his head was at that time. ‘Year Zero’ is no different.

“I haven't found out the answers to everything, but I'm not at war with myself as much as I was," he laughs.

Trent goes on to admit that his troubles continued into sobriety, feeling compromised when he made 'With Teeth': he was clean, but he was still unconfident.

”I was a fuck up, and I had fucked a lot of shit up - maybe even my career. So I approached ‘With Teeth’ with kid gloves - slightly afraid to touch it at all.""I look back now and see things I wouldn't do again," he says honestly. This lack of self assurance meant he allowed too many people to comment on the album before it was finished. “I just wasn't in a confident enough place to say 'thanks for your opinion, but I disagree'. I don't want to officially say that I felt compromised on that record, but this time around I didn't let anybody in the room."

Did that make you want to indulge again? Fall off the wagon?

"No," he says honestly. "I gotta say, truly not. When I got clean, I had really had enough. I wasn't thinking 'maybe I'll get clean. Maybe I'll try it out'. I spent several years making sure that I'd had enough. I reached a point where there was no romance, no illusion of fun, so even in dark times now, I honestly don't look on [booze/drugs] like, 'ah, if I could just…" he taps his arm and simulates injecting, laughing at the thought. "I'm not saying that can't happen.

I could walk out of here, go get a drink and within a week I could be," he looks pensively out the window, "dead, or…" he pauses again, "Who knows what? But I'm not interested in doing that. I'm on a path of healthiness. The process of working on this record has been more rewarding than any other thing."

'Year Zero' really is Trent Reznor starting again.

Everything you thought you knew about this polymath is different. With his jovial manner, often cheeky smile and frequent jocular asides, it is hard to imagine that only a few years ago, this man was knocking at Death's door demanding entrance. Trent Reznor is a man changed. And it's more than not drinking or having a life-threatening drug addiction. Whether or not he can see that his concept album is less fictional and more personal than he thinks, it doesn't matter - he is confident, he is happy, he is reborn. "I fucked up my friendships, my relationships and my health, but I never wanted to abuse music like that." So having allowed himself to be 'compromised' on 'With Teeth' Reznor is making no concessions to authority with his new one.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for Trent Reznor.

PRETTY HATE MACHINE

1989

Nine Inch Nails’ debut followed Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Throbbing Gristle’s lead by combining metal music with an electronic sensibility, and pumped it full of introspective agony. This accessible industrial masterpiece roped in fans of rock, goth, metal and dance music and rock-stardom beckoned. But Mr Self Destruct was on his way too…

BURN: ‘Head Like A Hole’

BROKEN

1992

After such a portentous debut, Trent found himself trapped in a depressing label feud; the result was this lauded EP. The era also ushered in Trent’s penchant for auto re-interpretation, and the subsequent ‘Fixed’ EP – also 1992 – was the first remix release. In the lengthy hinterland between albums, ‘Broken’ was thirst-quenching relief.

BURN: ‘Wish’

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

1994

Reznor was now eye-balls deep in substance abuse, and the resulting album was the walking talking proof that it was wreaking havoc on his soul. The album is arguably his bleakest, but remains musically focussed. The abject self-loathing and terrifying social anxiety manifested itself on tape as both cosmic heroin-like nod-outs and raging and violent metallic tirades.

BURN: ‘Closer’

THE FRAGILE

1999

Five more years have passed and Trent has reached the bottom of his spiral: the drugs aren’t fun anymore and there’s no escape. ‘The Fragile’ is a sprawling double concept album’s-worth of what ‘the brink’ looks like; in places angry, in places hopeless. Reznor was almost suicidal, almost daring his body to give up trying to survive the drug binges.

BURN: ‘Starfuckers Inc.’

WITH TEETH

2005

Reznor is clean. Having to cope with the real world without narcotic escapism, Reznor creates a concise collection of tracks that reveal his uncertainty about the future as well as a reluctant optimism. The album proved that Reznor could still plumb the depths of his dark and complex soul for inspiration. The despondency was gone, but things were far from rosy.

BURN: ‘The Hand That Feeds’