Nine Inch Nails (abbreviated as NIN) is an American industrial rock band founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. As its main producer, singer, composer and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and solely responsible for the direction of the band. The music of Nine Inch Nails covers a wide range of musical genres, although maintaining a characteristic sound using electronic instruments and processing in the recording studio. After recording each new studio album, Reznor is a band of musicians for tours and concerts. This band is often changing and arranges the songs to fit the live performances. On stage, NIN often used spectacular visual elements to their performances, most notably the light show .
The followers of underground music very welcome to Nine Inch Nails in his early years. The band produced several highly influential albums in the 1990s that were very well received, many of the Nine Inch Nails songs became hits, two of which won Grammy Awards, and the band has sold over twenty million albums in the world, [4] of ten million and a half have been in the U.S. alone. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine’s list of most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as ” the most important artist of the music. ” In 2004, Rolling Stone placed Nine Inch Nails at number 94 on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Despite this The band has had several feuds with the corporate music industry. In 2007, because of these corporate problems, Reznor announced that Nine Inch Nails left their record label and will release all their future material independently.
Since 1989, Nine Inch Nails has released eight studio albums. His most recent releases, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip, both 2008, were released under Creative Commons license. In the first instance both were released as a digital download, and its physical release later. The digital release of The Slip was completely free. NIN has been nominated twelve times for the Grammy Awards, having twice won the prize with “Wish” and “Happiness in Slavery” in 1992 and 1995, respectively.
Training (1988-1989)
In 1987, Trent Reznor played keyboards for a band called Exotic Birds of Cleveland, represented at that time by John Malm, Jr. Reznor and Malm became friends, so when Reznor Exotic Birds left to make his own music, Malm is became his manager informally. At this time Reznor worked as sound engineer and janitor at Right Track Studios, and asked the owner Bart Koster permission to record some demos of his own material while the study was empty. Koster agreed, remarking that only cost him “a bit of wear on the heads of his films.”
As assembled the demo, the first recordings of Nine Inch Nails, Reznor was unable to find a band to play the material as he wanted. Therefore, inspired by Prince, Reznor played all instruments except drums. Reznor has followed this methodology in most of the studio albums the band, but occasionally have involved other musicians and assistants. In 1988, after making his first concert, opening for Skinny Puppy, the sole ambition of Reznor for Nine Inch Nails was to produce a twelve-inch single with a small European label. Several labels responded favorably to the material , so that Reznor got signed by TVT Records. Ten of the tracks on the Right Track demos are re-recorded the first album by the band, Pretty Hate Machine 1989.
Reznor said in 1994 that chose the name “Nine Inch Nails” because “it was easy to abbreviate” rather than “any literal meaning” although there are other rumors about the band name alleging that Reznor chose name in reference to Jesus’ crucifixion with nine inch skewers, or by nine inch nails Freddy Krueger. Nine Inch Nails logo consisting of the letters “NIИ” within a box , was designed by Reznor and Gary Talpa and first appeared on the band’s first single, “Down in It”, inspired by the typeface designed by Tibor Kalman for the Talking Heads album Remain in Light followed Talpa designing for NIN in 1997.
Pretty Hate Machine (1989)
The first album from Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine, composed, arranged and performed by Trent Reznor, was released in 1989. Meant Reznor’s first collaboration with Adrian Sherwood (who produced the single “Down in It” in London without seeing face to face Reznor) and Mark “Flood” Ellis. Flood served as producer of the band in all major releases from Nine Inch Nails until 1994, while Sherwood did remixes for the band until 2000. Reznor and his co-producers added to the demos recorded at Right Track Studio songs “Head Like a Hole” and “No”. Michael Azerrad, a critic of Rolling Stone magazine described the album as “compelling and industrial noise on a pop” and “harrowing but catchy music” Reznor called this combination “a sincere statement” of “what was in the head at that moment. ” After spending one hundred and thirteen weeks on the Billboard 200, Pretty Hate Machine was one of the first independent music albums be certified RIAA platinum. Video clips “Down in It” and “Head Like a Hole” were issued by the music channel MTV, but also left explicit video clip of the song “Sin” in 1997 included in the home video Closure.
In 1990, started the tour, NIN Pretty Hate Machine Tour Series for the United States, opening for alternative rock artists such as Peter Murphy and The Jesus and Mary Chain. At some point, Reznor began to break the material on stage, Mike Gitter, Rockbeat interviewer attributed this aggressive attitude to the early success of NIN. Nine Inch Nails then embarked on a world tour that passed through the 1991 Lollapalooza festival. After a poor reception in Europe, opening for Guns N ‘Roses, NIN returned to the U.S. due to pressure from TVT Records to release an album after Pretty Hate Machine. In response, Reznor began secretly recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference.
