Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with GQ, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross confirmed that they are planning to work on a new album. On top of that, the duo have also announced the launch of With Teeth, a new company that will handle a number of their other ventures.

Ross said the following about new music:

“I do feel excited about starting on the next record. I think we’re in a place now where we kind of have an idea.”

Reznor also noted that their soundtrack work “managed to make Nine Inch Nails feel way more exciting than it had been in the past few years.” He went on to say that he “kind of let it atrophy a bit in [his] mind for a variety of reasons.”

Aside from new music, the pair also discussed how With Teeth will allow them to branch out into other sectors. The following excerpt from GQ delved deeper into that company:

“And then there was the company, which Reznor and Ross spent the last two years putting together, piece by piece, with the help of John Crawford, their longtime art director, and the producer Jonathan Pavesi. The idea was, what could they do that they hadn’t already done around storytelling? Some of that might take the form of examining Nine Inch Nails from yet another angle – ‘we’ve been working on homegrown IP around Nine Inch Nails, stories we could tell, and we’re working on developing those in a way that are not what you think they’d be.’ (As in: not a biopic.) They also have a show in development with Christopher Storer, the creator of The Bear, they said, and a film with the veteran horror director Mike Flanagan.”

The following was also added about their other projects:

“There was a short film coming with the artist Susanne Deeken. There was a clothing venture, a line called Memory Fade (one of the contributing artists is Fergus Purcell, known for his work with Palace and Aries), which will arrive this summer. There was a music festival that they were currently planning, “where we’re going to debut as performing as composers along with a roster of other interesting people,” and a record label, both scheduled to launch around the same time.

And for two years they’ve been working with Epic Games on something that is not exactly a video game, in the UEFN ecosystem Epic has built around Fortnite.”

On top of all that, the duo are also working on scores for “Queer,” “The Gorge,” “Challengers,” and “Cherry Pie.” Reznor summed everything up with the following:

“Let’s try some stuff. We’re bored. We are. You know what I mean? We’re grateful. We enjoy doing films. We can write a better Nine Inch Nails record, I think. We can put on a cooler tour. We are aimed to do that. But man, what if we try to do that?”

What if we could take what we’re good at, like we did with film? We identified something I think we’re good at and we figured out how to apply it to something else. What if we take that theory and try it on some other things? And that’s led us into: We’re not beaten down completely yet. And it feels exciting. That’s what matters to us right now.”