Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could Have Been

A few days ago, I introduced one of my favorite bands, Radiohead. It's one of the two bands I never stopped listening over the past 30+ years. They're two bands who, in my opinion, have always been able to evolve their styles while consistently releasing top-quality music.

The second band is Nine Inch Nails. I'm not sure how to introduce them.

They started in the late 1980s as an "angry" band. Their genre is called "industrial music." It's an avant-garde mix of electronic and rock music that often sounds as if it were coming from factory machines rather than musical instruments. Despite their aggressive sound, their talent was recognized, and they grew in popularity throughout the 1990s and beyond. In fact, their frontman, Trent Reznor, is now one of the most recognized and influential musicians in the rock scene.

In addition to Nine Inch Nails, Reznor has had a successful career composing film scores with his bandmate Atticus Ross. They won two Oscars for their movie soundtracks: one for The Social Network and one for Soul (ソウルフル・ワールド in Japanese).

While I've usually introduced bands with their first or most famous song on this blog, I'm making a different choice with the first Nine Inch Nails song I'll post here.

It's neither their first success nor their most famous song. It's actually not a very famous song, but it's one of my favorites.

It's one of their quietest and calmest songs (it's more "shoegaze" than "industrial"), yet you can still feel the intensity of the emotions it conveys.

As I've mentioned, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross often compose music for movies. Well, this October, it won't just be the two of them, but the whole band will be signing the soundtrack for the new Tron movie.

The first song was released just days ago. Here it is. So, if you have to wait for me to post the most famous Nine Inch Nails songs, at least you can listen to their newest song now.

Enjoy!