Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross aren’t taking time to bask in the glory of Sunday night’s Oscar win for Best Original Score. Instead, they’re turning their focus immediately on a new Nine Inch Nails album.
Reznor, Ross, and Late Show With Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste took home the prestigious honor for their work on the animated film Soul at last night’s Academy Awards. During the acceptance speech, Batiste did all the talking, as the two NIN members stood by his side.
However, during the post-win backstage meeting with press, Reznor let his NIN plans be known when a journalist asked how they separate their work in the band from scoring films, and whether there was “new Nine Inch Nails stuff coming up the pike soon.”
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Reznor answered, “Ten years ago, when we did The Social Network, which is the first film that we worked on, it was such a great experience. We just came out of it inspired and re‑energized, and it was working on a medium we hadn’t done before and learned so much, that we felt like, hey, let’s do a Nine Inch Nails record; let’s go on tour.”
He continued, “And what we’ve tried to do since then is break it up where we do some rock music, we come back and do some film work. We’ve just done three pretty big films in Watchmen, Mank, and Soul in a row. We should be on tour but COVID has prevented that. We are planning on working on Nine Inch Nails material as soon as, probably tomorrow.”
While Reznor’s response should come as welcome news to Nine Inch Nails fans, it’s not a surprising revelation. Last year, in the early months of the pandemic, he did say he was hoping to “deep dive into new NIN material” in an Instagram post.
The past several months have seen Reznor and Ross earn a number of noteworthy honors. They also took home the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, and back in November, Nine Inch Nails were officially inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Here at Consequence, we named Reznor and Ross as our “Composers of the Year” for 2020. In conjunction with the honor, they spoke with us about their work on Soul and Mank (which was also nominated for an Oscar), and their working relationship with director David Fincher, among other topics.
In 2020, NIN released the new companion albums Ghosts IV: Locusts and Ghosts V: Together as free downloads as a gift to fans during the pandemic.
Watch Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste during their post-trophy appearance in the Oscars press room below.
