Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor stated in an interview following his Oscar win for ‘Best Original Score’ that the industrial rock group will “probably” begin working on new Nine Inch Nails music today, or at least sometime soon. Reznor, Nine Inch Nails partner Atticus Ross and pianist Jon Batiste had won the Oscar for their work on the score for Pixar’s Soul.

Reznor, Ross and Batiste were asked about their plans for the future following the win, especially in regards to how the two Nine Inch Nails bandmates split their focus between their work on scores and their own music. In response, Reznor stated, “Ten years ago, when we did The Social Network, which is the first film that we worked on, it was such a great experience. We just came out of it inspired and re-energized, and it was working on a medium we hadn’t done before and learned so much, that we felt like, ‘Hey, let’s do a Nine Inch Nails record; let’s go on tour.’ And what we’ve tried to do since then is break it up where we do some rock music, we come back and do some film work.”

He continued, “We’ve just done three pretty big films in Watchmen, Mank, and Soul in a row. We should be on tour but COVID has prevented that. We are planning on working on Nine Inch Nails material as soon as…probably tomorrow.”

In March 2020, Nine Inch Nails shared their two latest works as a surprise, two ambient albums that they released together as Ghosts V & VI. The albums were the latest in a series of experimental electronic pieces that the band put out in 2008 as Ghosts I-IV. Nine Inch Nails was also the artist behind the recently independently-released Quake (1996) video game soundtrack. Their last rock album was 2018’s Bad Witch, which was still a rather experimental offering from the band. Like Reznor stated during the interview, they’d planned to tour in Fall 2020, but the plans fell through before they were even announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although this was their first Oscar win, Reznor and Ross are no strangers to awards. The duo won an Emmy for the score to HBO’s Watchmen, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with other Nine Inch Nails members that Reznor had to make sure got included and won a Golden Globe for ‘Best Original Score’ for the Soul soundtrack.

Nine Inch Nails has had a shifting lineup surrounding Trent Reznor since the outfit adopted the name in 1988. If including the Ghosts I-IV and Ghosts V & VI as just two albums, Reznor & collaborators have released 11 studio albums. They’ve become a household name thanks to hits like “Closer,” “The Hand That Feeds” and “Hurt,” and found massive critical success for albums like Pretty Hate Machine (1989), The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999).

However, ever since their work on the soundtrack for The Social Network in 2010, Reznor and Ross have become equally well-known for their scores. Some of their other less-recent contributions include the scores for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014) and Mid90s (2018).

Photo credit: Raymond Flotat