Nine Inch Nails

A musical project founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor (b. May 17, 1965), Nine Inch Nails soon signed with TVT Records and made its mark with Pretty Hate Machine (1989), produced with Flood and Adrian Sherwood. With a sound that blends rock, electronica and industrial tension, the album went platinum and established Nine Inch Nails as one of the leading industrial metal figures of the 1990s. After an acclaimed appearance at Lollapalooza and a hectic first European tour, Reznor stepped up a gear with the Broken EP (1992), which reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200, and went on to found Nothing Records. 1994 saw the release of The Downward Spiral, still produced with Flood, which reached #2 in the U.S. and became the band's central work, followed by Further Down the Spiral (1995), with contributions from Coil, Dave Navarro, J. G. Thirlwell, Rick Rubin and Aphex Twin. In 1999, The Fragile, featuring contributions from Dr. Dre, Clint Mansell, Bob Ezrin and Steve Albini, reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, before the live And All That Could Have Been (2002). After a period marked by his addictions, Reznor returned with With Teeth (2005), then Year Zero (2007), before releasing the instrumental project Ghosts I-IV and the album The Slip via the Internet in 2008. Nine Inch Nails then went into retreat while Reznor composed with Atticus Ross the music for The Social Network (2010), which won a Golden Globe and an Oscar, then The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), which won a Grammy Award, and Gone Girl (2014). The band returned in 2013 with Hesitation Marks, recorded with Adrian Belew and Lindsey Buckingham, then continued with the triptych Not the Actual Events (2016), Add Violence (2017) and Bad Witch (2018), when Atticus Ross became a permanent member. After Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts (2020), Nine Inch Nails signed the Tron: Ares soundtrack in 2025, with "As Alive As You Need Me to Be", which won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 2026. The band also relaunches its live activity with the Peel It Back tour, then extends this period with Tron Ares: Divergence and Nine Inch Noize, an electronic collaboration with Boys Noize.