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Trent Reznor And Nine Inch Nails Inspired Me To Write My First Novel

My first exposure to Nine Inch Nails was with my wife – we had been dating for about two or three months, and at the time I knew about her affection for NIN and its frontman, Trent Reznor. Sitting on the bed having our own YouTube party, I played her what I thought were the required tunes for new Radiohead fans to enjoy. She then turned the tables and played the director’s cut music video for “Closer.” My first reaction to it was literally, “What the fuck am I watching and listening to?” Even though I didn’t know in that very moment, the seed had been planted. Nine Inch Nails was about to become my fascination as well as one of my favourite bands of all time.

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Not only is the band and its frontman captivating, but they are deeply inspiring on many levels. Trent Reznor built Nine Inch Nails from the ground up, creating music after hours while employed as a midnight janitor, or so I’ve read. A relationship breakup was the catalyst for the creation of his first album, the synth-industrial Pretty Hate Machine. When his record label released Pretty Hate Machine and he was working on his next album, they wanted him to release something more of the same due to its huge success. Being an artist that wanted to push his own creative envelope, Trent decided to not give in and pursued his own vision for his next album, which became Broken. For this album, he even created a very dark short film that arranges all the music videos made for the album into something rather unique (and difficult to watch, due to a certain maiming testicle-grabbing machine and razor slicing). Never before had I seen what I believed to be a true artist, someone that seemed to be purely driven by nothing but the impulse to create art.

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As time went on, NIN’s albums became more complex, layered, and conceptual. I became very wrapped up with my interpretation of The Downward Spiral and The Fragile as being one man’s journey to rock bottom. Both albums carry some fantastic songs with incredibly potent, thought-provoking lyrics. Probably my favourite lyric he’s ever written is from “The Wretched” which can be found on the 1st disc of The Fragile:

The clouds will part and the sky cracks open

And god himself will reach his fucking arm through

Just to push you down

Just to hold you down

Powerful. The verse continues:

Stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss

And it’s hard to believe it could come down to this

Back at the beginning

Sinking

Spinning

Complete and utter despair saturates the lyrics. These songs inspired me to look deeper into one’s own darkness and how our minds, when burdened by mental illness or depression, are able to change the world around us and how we perceive it. It wasn’t until I listened to With Teeth where my creative fuel was set on fire, and I began to throw words on a blank page that formulated the beginning ideas for my novel.

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With Teeth is NIN’s fifth studio album, and is conceptual as well – my interpretation is that it’s about a man who is imprisoned, possibly in a different reality, and is unsure if the world he is seeing in front of him is real or a figment of his own imagination. My novel is about a young man who wakes up from a wild bender in an industrial area blanketed in fog, with no real recollection of how he got there or where he is. He realizes he’s not alone, but is being observed by a powerful entity he doesn’t understand, nor does he know if what he’s witnessing is reality or a dream. It was after listening to the darkness in Trent’s lyrics and exploring these themes that inspired me to begin writing my novel.

Seven years later, I’m still writing away when I have a moment, but for the first time in a decade, I know what the overall story arc is going to be, as well as the character’s motivations. It’s funny how you can be thinking about it for years, just waiting for that idea to pop into your head. For me, the moment was when I was inside a ramen restaurant with sweat literally pouring down my face and plopping into my soup (why I wanted to eat ramen in sweltering 28-30 degrees celcius heat I don’t know), and suddenly BAM – I knew the ending to my story. My wife laughed at me as I whipped out my iPhone and began rapidly typing my ending in silence. When I was finished I put my phone down and my once perfectly al dente noodles had gone soft. A worthy sacrifice for the work.

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2017 has been an amazing year for Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails fans. He’s released two EPs, Not The Actual Events and Add Violence. While I enjoy both immensely, Add Violence has really spoken to me creatively. My interpretation is that it’s very similar in concept to With Teeth. Add Violence is also a lot more personal, with its slow, brooding electronic beats. Starting strong with the single “Less Than,” filled with NIN’s staple grungy guitar and electronic drum beats, the tone shifts to something more intimate and personal for the remaining tracks on the album.

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Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails in the Twin Peaks Revival playing “She’s Gone” from Not The Actual Events. Hard to believe I just used “Twin Peaks” and “Nine Inch Nails” in the same sentence.

I wrote this article to simply say thank you. Thank you, Trent, for creating deep and inspiring music. The world needs more artists from all walks of life, and with people like you simply obeying their own basic impulse to write music, you motivate others to create their own art. From listening to your music, I’ve managed to begin a novel – a project I always wanted to do but felt the task to be very daunting. It’s now been seven years, and I’m closer to my goal than ever before. Keep making music and I will keep listening, always.


Disclaimer: All photos were provided by Google Images, I do not own any of them. This article was written from my own interpretation of NIN’s music and what I’ve read about the band and Trent Reznor in the past. I do not assume to know what I’ve read is true fact.

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©2023 by beckett van stralen. all written content within belongs to the writer.

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