In Could 2005, it had been nicely over half a decade for the reason that final 9 Inch Nails’ document and there was a really actual chance that Trent Reznor may not have ever been in a position to recapture what had made his band one of the crucial exhilarating and ferocious rock bands of the 90s. In any case, 9 Inch Nails’ earlier album had steered 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 exciting pay attention that was just about the sound of somebody heading into the wilderness and never bothering to convey a map.
“It’s an correct snapshot of my life at the moment,” Reznor mentioned of The Fragile in an interview with Steel Hammer in 2005. “I made one of the best document I might, with the instruments obtainable and, I used to be terrified, I used to be overcompensating. I’m pleased with it. It was made in insane circumstances… I hope I by no means make a document 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 chopping himself adrift, an thought solely hardened by the very fact he’d now gone AWOL for a number of years. It was actually laborious to think about that Reznor’s subsequent transfer wouldn’t solely be getting again on monitor but in addition making among 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 document 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 obtained clear and has by no means regarded again. He’s been on a jaw-dropping artistic streak ever since. It was a markedly transformative time within the Cleveland native’s life.
“There’s been a radical change,” Reznor informed 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 recent 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 mentioned. “I began writing the brand new album outdoors 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 had been taking up, he mentioned. “It’s really easy to make excellent sounding music these days,” he declared. “Everybody with an iMac has a sound editor, and might make superb sounding information. I activate the radio and every little thing sounds the identical, and that horrible music sounds prefer it’s good, when it’s not. We needed imperfection.”
The document accommodates a few of 9 Inch Nails’ most easy anthems, from the pulsing The Hand That Feeds to the menacing disco-in-hell grooves of Solely, bookended by a euphoric opener that feels 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 mentioned it was right 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 may’t do that, it’s too accessible, too pop, too catchy,’” Reznor informed MTV2’s Zane Lowe. “It could be secure for me to make a 14-minute artwork epic as a result of I’ve accomplished 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 robust tune’. A monitor 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 sincere with myself… Profession has all the time come second to making an attempt to make one of the best document I could make.”
It was an album steeped in his new-found sobriety, he mentioned. “Getting clear and getting your life so as teaches you humility and a humble nature I’ve by no means actually identified earlier than,” he continued. “Within the context of all that, having a profession was nonetheless one thing good however it 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 certainly one of 9 Inch Nails’ finest, the document that re-established them as one of many world’s most cherished rock bands and maybe because of this, 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 document that taught Trent Reznor he might do no matter he needed to.
