Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor appeared on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show today to premiere “God Break Down the Door,” the first single from the band’s upcoming album Bad Witch. In the interview, Reznor discussed the band’s upcoming Cold and Black and Infinite tour with the Jesus and Mary Chain, the approach of which he said was partially inspired by a recent LCD Soundsystem show.
“We went to see LCD Soundsystem’s show at the Palladium,” Reznor explained. “You know they could’ve played at the Forum but they chose to play a bunch nights in a smaller room…we left talking about it for a week. We like LCD but we were blown away…it just fucking felt good and it was exciting and it was right there and everybody was into it. We thought we want to do something in the world of that, where it feels like, if you get in to see the show, you get a unique experience. You are not in row a million with the security guard bitching at you.”
Reznor also said that Bad Witch was meant as the last in a trilogy of NIN projects including the 2016 EP Not the Actual Events and 2017’s Add Violence, and offered some cryptic reflection on the album’s themes. “[Bad Witch] wasn’t necessarily what we thought it was going to be when we started,” Reznor mused. “I thought it was going to go more science fiction. I don’t really want to overwhelm you with cleverness and deep diving…we wanted to take it in a way that surprised us–that doesn’t have…a nice clean and ultimately safe explanation. At our core, we are rotten, and that’s kind of the theme. It’s less about there’s there’s a reason why things are the way they are. It’s just we are all who we are.”
Reznor also discussed dusting off his saxophones and regaining chops he’d let slide for 20 years to play the horn parts on “God Break Down the Door,” and the in-person ticketing policy for the upcoming tour. Listen to the interview below.
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