In Might 2005, it had been properly over half a decade because the final 9 Inch Nails’ file and there was a really actual risk that Trent Reznor may not have ever been capable of recapture what had made his band some of the exhilarating and ferocious rock bands of the 90s. In spite of everything, 9 Inch Nails’ earlier album had advised 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 deliver 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 the perfect file I may, with the instruments accessible 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 file 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 definitely arduous to think about that Reznor’s subsequent transfer wouldn’t solely be getting again on monitor but in addition making a number of the poppiest-sounding music of 9 Inch Nails’ profession. But that’s precisely what occurred with their 2005 fourth album With Tooth, a galvanising clear slate of a file and one which revitalised Reznor as a creative 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 yr, sprung from. In between The Fragile and With Tooth, Reznor bought clear and has by no means regarded 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 properly… 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 Tooth with a contemporary begin in thoughts. After the dense, electronic-heavy dynamics of his first three information, right here he wished 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 highway 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 wished the music to sound imperfect.
It was an method born of the truth that the machines have been taking up, he mentioned. “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 every little thing sounds the identical, and that horrible music sounds prefer it’s good, when it’s not. We wished imperfection.”
The file incorporates 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 appears like gospel within the yr 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 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 achieved 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 track’. A monitor like The Hand That Feeds jumps out of the audio system after the primary pay attention. The uh-oh feeling is me worrying about what individuals assume and that’s not me being sincere with myself… Profession has at all times come second to making an attempt to make the perfect file 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 recognized earlier than,” he continued. “Within the context of all that, having a profession was nonetheless one thing good nevertheless it could possibly be gone and whether it is gone, that’s OK, I may nonetheless attempt to make the perfect music I can.”
Twenty years on, it stands up as one in all 9 Inch Nails’ greatest, the file 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 Tooth is the sound of 9 Inch Nails at their most streamlined, the file that taught Trent Reznor he may do no matter he wished to.
