In Might 2005, it had been nicely over half a decade because the final 9 Inch Nails’ report and there was a really actual risk that Trent Reznor may not have ever been in a position to recapture what had made his band some of the exhilarating and ferocious rock bands of the 90s. In any case, 9 Inch Nails’ earlier album had recommended the band’s chief was diving off the deep finish. Now considered a sprawling masterpiece, 1999’s The Fragile was additionally scattershot and unwieldy, an exhilarating pay attention that was just about the sound of somebody heading into the wilderness and never bothering to deliver a map.
“It’s an correct snapshot of my life at the moment,” Reznor stated of The Fragile in an interview with Steel Hammer in 2005. “I made one of the best report I might, with the instruments obtainable and, I used to be terrified, I used to be overcompensating. I’m happy with it. It was made in insane circumstances… I hope I by no means make a report like that once more… I used to be the man on the ledge, prepared to leap. I needed to get to a real backside.”
It was an album made by a person mired in dependancy and reducing himself adrift, an thought solely hardened by the actual fact he’d now gone AWOL for a number of years. It was actually onerous to think about that Reznor’s subsequent transfer wouldn’t solely be getting again on observe but additionally making a few of the poppiest-sounding music of 9 Inch Nails’ profession. But that’s precisely what occurred with their 2005 fourth album With Enamel, a galvanising clear slate of a report and one which revitalised Reznor as an inventive drive. That is the place the Reznor we all know in 2025, the fella who, alongside his co-conspirator Atticus Ross, pumps out about 5 phenomenal soundtracks a 12 months, sprung from. In between The Fragile and With Enamel, Reznor acquired clear and has by no means appeared again. He’s been on a jaw-dropping inventive streak ever since. It was a markedly transformative time within the Cleveland native’s life.
“There’s been a radical change,” Reznor advised Clickmusic on the time. “I’ve gone from dependancy to sobriety. My odds of survival have gone up – that’s a profound change. I’ve modified my administration, I get on higher with the label, I do know the place my cash is – which is a change. I’m more healthy in physique and thoughts. My writing is clearer as nicely… I really feel like I’ve woken up from a coma… and I’m simply grateful that I nonetheless have stuff to say.”
Equally, Reznor arrived on the making of With Enamel with a contemporary begin in thoughts. After the dense, electronic-heavy dynamics of his first three information, right here he needed one thing extra performance-orientated. “I’m nonetheless adhering to the collision of icy precision and human error,” he stated. “I began writing the brand new album exterior the studio, with simply lyrics and a piano, in order that the songs wouldn’t get too far down the manufacturing street earlier than I had completed writing them… if there was a bass-line or riff, we didn’t simply loop two bars again and again, we’d play the entire piece. And we didn’t chop all of it up beat by beat, we didn’t fuss with it an excessive amount of. We needed the music to sound imperfect.
It was an strategy born of the truth that the machines have been taking on, he stated. “It’s really easy to make good sounding music these days,” he declared. “Everybody with an iMac has a sound editor, and may make wonderful sounding information. I activate the radio and all the things sounds the identical, and that horrible music sounds prefer it’s good, when it’s not. We needed imperfection.”
The report comprises a few of 9 Inch Nails’ most simple anthems, from the pulsing The Hand That Feeds to the menacing disco-in-hell grooves of Solely, bookended by a euphoric opener that seems like gospel within the 12 months 5000 (All The Love In The World) and one of many warmest, stripped-down ballads of Reznor’s profession (Proper The place It Belongs). Reznor stated it was all the way down to opening himself up artistically.
“Once I was writing The Hand That Feeds or Proper The place It Belongs, a voice would pop up in my head and say, ‘You possibly can’t do that, it’s too accessible, too pop, too catchy,’” Reznor advised MTV2’s Zane Lowe. “It will be protected for me to make a 14-minute artwork epic as a result of I’ve executed it and nobody goes to make enjoyable of you for doing that. However I wrote some songs and felt like, ‘These are fairly catchy’ and I didn’t write them to purchase a brand new pool, I wrote them as a result of they sounded good to me. On the finish of the day, I felt like, ‘It’s a powerful track’. A observe like The Hand That Feeds jumps out of the audio system after the primary pay attention. The uh-oh feeling is me being concerned about what folks assume and that’s not me being trustworthy with myself… Profession has at all times come second to making an attempt to make one of the best report I could make.”
It was an album steeped in his new-found sobriety, he stated. “Getting clear and getting your life so as teaches you humility and a humble nature I’ve by no means actually recognized earlier than,” he continued. “Within the context of all that, having a profession was nonetheless one thing good but it surely might be gone and whether it is gone, that’s OK, I might nonetheless attempt to make one of the best music I can.”
Twenty years on, it stands up as one in all 9 Inch Nails’ finest, the report that re-established them as one of many world’s most cherished rock bands and maybe consequently, opened up different avenues for Reznor to discover sooner or later. With Enamel is the sound of 9 Inch Nails at their most streamlined, the report that taught Trent Reznor he might do no matter he needed to.
