THE NIN HOTLINE

In mid-April, I got a notification that I had a new email in my NIN Hotline email address, and when I saw the sender, it made me feel really happy. The name Keith Duemling should ring a bell if you've ever done a deep dive in the NIN Hotline article archives, or if you're old like me and used to go to SmashedUpSanity.com. I often collaborated online with Keith in my late teens and early 20s, including the launch of NothingRadio.net, a streaming station that only played music from Nothing Records - which showed up in print in both Spin magazine and Shift magazine, and which got me a three-way phone call with NIN's publicist and Ross Rosen, NIN's lawyer. (Totally silly, but it worked out in the end). I even got to hang out with him in Cleveland at the first show of the Fragility Tour.

A quarter century ago.

It's hard to describe the breadth of what Keith put into motion at SUS. A huge archive of NIN related articles, still hosted here today. An online zine, with multiple contributors submitting poetry, prose, and editorial articles. Newsletters, reviews, lyrics, art, fonts, wallpapers, discographies, chat, and more - it was a powerhouse of a fan site up through the early 00s, but the site slowly faded away, as more important things commanded time once spent on a seemingly never-ending hobby.

I'm so delighted that what Keith sent along was a new site, but full of decades of memories. And All That Could Have Been is an experience out of time. When you click or tap through, you enter a gallery of thousands of visual memories, each pausing for a few seconds before you're pulled into some other point in the timeline, at another dimension of the experience. In a century defined by moving fast and breaking things, it's a slow, thoughtful place. And if you've been online since the turn of the century, you might even find a callback to the randomgrid - familiar, but different.

I'm so glad to see Keith building again. He makes it look simple, but I also find it reflective and thoughtful. AndAllThatCouldHaveBeen.com

Teddy at Interscope wanted asked if I could let you know that they are blowing out unnumbered Interscope Vinyl Club editions of The Downward Spiral through until the 15th. Seems like something you might be interested in!

Maybe you're like me and you have a few copies of The Downward Spiral on vinyl - what makes the IVC version different? Well, it's more or less the definitive edition, but with a different catalog number, and a nice print of a well known Jonathan Rach photo of Trent wrecking a DX7 on stage. At $48 + tax & shipping, even though it doesn't have the x/3000 foil stamp that you'd find on the limited IVC pressing, this is pretty much the last time you'll get a chance to get this particular album at a price this low.

And because I'm starved for creative fun-work, I spent about 20 minutes with my Canon and DaVinci resolve and made a little promo clip. I posted it to the NIN Hotline account on Bluesky, on Threads, and I even did a vertical variant for Instagram.

The only reason I haven't posted about the latest Nine Inch Nails record, Nine Inch Noize, is because my hands have been holding my headphones to my head since April 17. Eating has been a challenge, and I have to stay off camera at work, but I've been listening to the album on repeat since it dropped. Longer, if you count the time I spent listening to the audio rip of the Coachella performance.

It's all killer, no filler, I don't need to tell you that, you've been listening to it too.

P.S. if you'd like a copy on CD, there are counterfeits on eBay, and as of this week, people have reported receiving their copies from this seller - who has been prolific, to say the least.

If you were hoping for studio versions of what was played at Coachella, I've got excellent news, coming from Brooklyn Vegan. (Consequence, who I credited in a previous version of this post, tagged the news as "Alternative Rock, Rock" and didn't mention a source)

According to the quote on BrooklynVegan, "We recorded this album all over the place – some of it’s live, some in studios, hotels, planes, etc. We had a lot of fun revisiting these songs and hope you enjoy. Listen LOUD.” There's more, but I'm not going to lift everything from BrooklynVegan - they put the work in, because I still think it's important for journalists to get paid, so click through to the link above. There aren't nearly as many ads as the publication I initially sourced!

01. Intro (Nine Inch Noize Version)
02. Vessel (Nine Inch Noize Version)
03. She’s Gone Away (Nine Inch Noize Version)
04. Heresy (Nine Inch Noize Version)
05. Parasite (Nine Inch Noize Version)
06. Copy Of A (Nine Inch Noize Version)
07. Me I’m Not (Nine Inch Noize Version)
08. Closer (Nine Inch Noize Version)
09. The Warning (Nine Inch Noize Version)
10. Memorabilia (Nine Inch Noize Version)
11. Came Back Haunted (Nine Inch Noize Version)
12. As Alive As You Need Me To Be (Nine Inch Noize Version)

It's Tuesday as I write this, Saturday seems like a month ago, but tonight I found time to turn off the lights, turn up the volume and watch Nine Inch Noize at Coachella.

The San Francisco Chronicle's headline is Nine Inch Noize's Coachella set may go down as one of the festival's best ever. Over on Yahoo, Fans Can’t Stop Talking About Nine Inch Noize. Consequence, who spilled the beans about the upcoming album, come out saying At Coachella, Nine Inch Noize Staged a Nightmare Rave for the Ages. Clash Music says Nine Inch Noize Delivered A Coachella Set For The Ages.

None of these are exaggerations.

The setlist is phenomenal, with deep cuts like Parasite (from the incredible How To Destroy Angels debut EP) Memorabilia (a Soft Cell cover and a personal favorite of mine since the moment I heard it), heavy representation from Year Zero, and the hardest hitting version of Heresy you've ever heard. The singles don't get overlooked either, with Copy Of A, Came Back Haunted, Closer, and As Alive as You Need Me To Be getting the live remix treatment. Mariqueen Maandig Reznor joins the lineup of Trent, Atticus, and Alex Ridha during a 45 minute set that never misses, with staging and production that transcends - a tall order given how impressive the touring productions often are. It's not just your social media algorithm supporting you with a bubble of things you like to see - it really is as good as everyone is saying.

The new Nine Inch Nails album, Nine Inch Noize drops on Friday, and I am itching to damage my hearing with these pulsing electronic takes from across the NIN catalog.

One day after the album drops, Nine Inch Noize returns to the Sahara stage for weekend 2 of Coachella, and their 8pm slot at the Saraha stage on Saturday is expected to be an absolute madhouse.

Over on Reverb, you've already missed the stage-used Strega and Tascam deck, but as of this posting there are still 11 items available, shipped from Chicago, including that sweet sweet Iceman Bass, and a Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 that saw ten years of touring usage. If I had space and wasn't spending all my money building a museum to house a bunch of artifacts I dug out of toilet holes, I'd have jumped on this sale myself.

Back in October, we reported that a promo CD for The Walled Off Hotel appeared on Discogs. Initially just a listing, it wasn't long before the album was offered for sale, listed on Discogs for $2,000. The listing came and went a few times, but earlier this month, it became apparent that a member of the fan community had spent the money, and shared the previously unreleased track "Separation Anxiety" along with a link to a collection of charities specific to Gaza and Palestine, especially appropriate given the Walled Off Hotel's location in Bethlehem.

When the seller got wind of this call to charitable donation, they went ahead and leaked the album, along with questionably sourced instrumental versions of Bad Witch and Not The Actual Events. You can follow the entire saga across a nine-year-old thread on Echoing the Sound, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. There are downloadable lossless versions out there, but having been raised in the era of record label lawsuits, that's all I'll say about that here.

There was speculation that the unexpected release of the album was tied to the date on the commemorative ticket stubs being given out on the Peel It Back 2026 tour, but that date just indicated the last day of the tour. The leak of The Walled Off Hotel being the same day is just a strange coincidence.

As mentioned on NINwiki, Trent and Atticus were proud of this album, and still had plans in 2018 to release it on vinyl, but a lot has happened since then. Perhaps now that Interscope is back in the picture, an official release will see the light of day before counterfeit pressings hit the streets.

San Diego brought with it a flurry of unusual activity at the Nine Inch Nails show. In a concert that already has a lot of cameras, there were EVEN MORE cameras, some swooping around on cranes. The cadre of fans that camp out all day to get their spot on the rail, again, spilled onto the floor to find strangers already in the best spots, as part of a production that some folks on Reddit got a behind the scenes peek at - despite “PLEASE - NO PICTURES OR POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA” being printed on the top of the plan that got posted there.

Regulars to NIN concerts noted unusual behavior from these people on the rail, and their special treatment, including dedicated security, and some people immediately drew the conclusion that Trent Reznor hates NIN fans and wanted fashionable influencers to be the ones visible in close-up camera shots for what must be an upcoming concert film. Why?

“Can we leave our spots now,” one of these disaffected interlopers sent to a group text that was observed - and photographed - by one member of the fan community, along with the reply “Yes as long as decent looking people take your spots,” and you can imagine how well this went over when it was posted to Discordance, NIN’s official chat community.

Reader, everything you feared has become true. Trent Reznor hates ugly people. Nine Inch Nails is “grasping at straws for the younger audience,” the NIN camp are creeping on minors, NIN is becoming KISS, and “Nine Inch Live: 2027 will almost certainly be sponsored by Kylie Cosmetics, Urban Outfitters and Discord“ and since young influencers have been posting about going to NIN shows on TikTok, this lineup of disinterested actors on the rail must be a last gasp for relevancy (from a band that sold out just about every show on their most recent tour, and continues to sell out arenas into 2026). The New Management has taken control over the NIN subreddit. John Crawford is doing Mariqueen’s crooked bidding and ensuring that only beautiful influencers get the good seats and access to catering. The undead lich of Walt Disney has cursed Atticus Ross, using him to draw Trent Reznor into an eternity of corporate whoredom. Nine Inch Nails as you know it is dead.

Quite the turn of events on a tour where members of the NIN camp have been walking around, giving out limited edition shirts to fans. Where the very Discordance admins that are suppressing angry fans online have also been sharing polaroids of concert attendees excited enough about the show to go beyond jeans and a tshirt. Randomly upgrading people in seats to the floor. Trent Reznor also quietly does a shit ton of really big-hearted charity, and has been giving lanyards and stickies to awkward dorks for as long as I’ve been going to NIN shows.

Nonetheless, some people who were hurt by their experience seem to think that Trent, or Kraw, or PerfectRug, or Management have made an executive decision that NIN fans are ugly and fat, and are erasing all who dissent, and are otherwise refusing to acknowledge their concerns. Some of those people are propagating rumors, casting aspersions, and suggesting some pretty disgusting things, because they had a bad experience with people who are part of this production. I’ve also noticed expressions of ageism aimed against young fans and newcomers to Nine Inch Nails. That might be even slightly titillating if it was anything more interesting than “Oh yeah, name three songs” gatekeeping.

There’s a lot that’s terrible in this world. A lot of us have lived through trauma, more are experiencing trauma every day. Let down by so many seemingly good people who end up being shady, we’re trained to be on our guard for heroes to fall. And when a third party brought in for an interesting project includes some people making some poor choices, there’s clearly the temptation to use that as an excuse to unload grief and anger about the ever-changing world and focus that on an artist you’ve been following for decades. Every tour will have its melodrama, but I think that’s a terrible excuse for maligning the character of people who are working hard to try and enhance the experience for the fans of all ages that continue filling up arenas.

Anaheim was the next stop on the tour, and the same group of people were doing similar work for that show, and if reports on the internet are to be believed, things were communicated better with the folks in line for the show. It was much less contentious, and I didn’t see any text messages about old white dudes.

So - if we’re lucky, we’ll see a Peel It Back concert film of some variety. Maybe something you’re not expecting. Or maybe it ends up next to the Wave Goodbye footage, because plans didn’t work out.

There have been some big changes and some subtle ones too, across fan sites that have survived the massacre that social networks and wikiepdia hath wrought in the early 21st century.

Most recently, NIN Tour History has undergone a massive site redesign, the renovation bringing a slick new look, with the occasional twitchy interactions that remind me of NIN DVD menus of old. Along with the redesign, there've been bug fixes, new badges being added, and my favorite new feature, a performance map; when you create an account at NIN Tour History, you can indicate which shows you've gone to, and now you'll get a visual geographic reference accompanying your itinerary.

Last June saw the relaunch of NINlive as a dynamic, database-driven website. Up until last year, that gargantuan collection of information was a collection of static HTML pages, which made sitewide changes challenging, and fun statistical analysis impossible. Now, each performance includes a breakdown of band members, banter transcriptions, and stats about the venue, the songs performed, and more. You can also create an NINlive account via Discord, start racking up shows there as well.

NIN Wiki just pushed five years of software updates through in a very short amount of time. Most of the benefits of this are security related, as well as better handling of special characters, but it did require a complete rewrite of the site's skin, which Malechite had to port over in meticulous detail. If you're still seeing a coming soon screen when you visit the site, just perform a hard refresh.

Have I given a shout out to https://nin.fan/ yet? If people still had homepages bookmarked like they did in 1998, most of you would set your home page to nin.fan and not the NIN Hotline and I wouldn't even be mad about it.

Over here, I've been doing some behind-the-scenes updates to the ol' Hotline lately, as well as making some subtle changes to the public facing portion of the site. One thing worth calling out is that the URL of the RSS feed has changed, for boring technical reasons. If you're subscribed to a Feedburner URL, update your subscription to point to this classically obtuse URL - ironically, "4fb.xml" was the filename I chose for the feed because it was "For Facebook", which would automatically pipe in updates from the site. A lot of sites moved traffic to Facebook, and most of them are dead now. I hope The NIN Hotline outlasts Facebook, just as it did MySpace, Friendster, and many of the magazines referenced in our article archives. I also updated our 'merch' page, which really are just some curated eBay searches, and if you buy from that page, I get a couple cents. It's been broken for ages, and the site's still up, so don't feel obligated.

Lastly, the starfuckers.inc Instagram account, with 10x the followers of the ninhotline Instagram account (for which I am definitely not a little bit jealous about, nuh uh) is reportedly building a web presence for their Peel It Back tour journal project. You can submit your story about the tour to be featured on the site, and this warms my heart. There were tour journals on TheFragile.com and on ETS that, maybe one day, I'll be able to recover. The way I recovered all of Seems Like Salvation. And that is what's called burying the lede, friends.

Nine Inch Nails have released a remix album for the Tron Ares Soundtrack entitled “DIVERGENCE” on streaming platforms. Have you listened to it yet? Join in the discussion on echoing the sound.

You can pre-order the record in compact disc or vinyl forms at Nine Inch Nails Store.

Pre-Order Tron Ares: DIVERGENCE CD
https://shop.nin.com/collections/nin-x-tron-ares/products/tron-ares-divergence-cd

Pre-Order Tron Ares: DIVERGENCE Vinyl:
https://shop.nin.com/collections/nin-x-tron-ares/products/tron-divergence-2xlp

Remember Know the Score, the original NIN sheet music website, still looking straight out of 2006? Twenty years later, composer Melissa Dunphy collaborated with the St Louis Chamber Chorus on an idea she'd been thinking of for a long time: arranging Nine Inch Nails for choir. These are a whole world away from the Closer madrigal she wrote in college, with decades of experience informing a deep fandom for the material. You can download the sheet music for Hurt and Right Where It Belongs sheet music, but if you're not in a choir and still want to hear it, you've got options. Step back into the 20th century with me...

On Classic 107.3 FM in St Louis, on February 11 at 7pm CT, host Philip Barnes will air an hour of Melissa's choral works, including professionally recorded performances of Hurt and Right Where It Belongs. The program re-airs on Sunday at 9am CST.

It being 2026, you can also listen online, naturally. And, as I was reviewing this update, it looks as though streaming services such as Apple Classical now have the album available to stream. You'll get better fidelity here, but the radio show comes with additional context and a little bit of inside baseball.

Both are available on - that's right - compact disc. $24 to the St Louis Chamber Chorus gets you these tracks on a silver platter. The best experience is hearing them sung live - so if you sing, or someone you know sings in a choir... make it happen, and tell us!!

Following in the footsteps of the 2025 tour kickoff, NIN took the stage in 2026 without any press and little in the way of traditional promotion, bringing their stunning live show to the parts of America they didn't quite get to last year. The tour brings a new mix of songs, particularly in the opening segments of the show, which have not only included new takes from Pretty Hate Machine and With Teeth, but small quotes of Depeche Mode and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Boys Noize reprises his role as tour opener and mid-set remix machine, and the NIN Live lineup sees Dub Trio co-founder Stu Brooks on bass and synths, as Alessandro Cortini steps away for work in Europe.

The tour comes with updated merch too, and I think it's some of the best designs offered in a while. merch.nincatalog.com has most of it up in the 2026 Peel It Back Tour section, with more coverage on their Instagram account.

Early entrants to the show are receiving commemorative ticket stubs, similar to the ones introduced in the latter half of Peel It Back 2025. The section/area/row numbers on the 2025 ticket stub aligned with the release date of the single for As Alive As You Need Me To Be, which coincided with the final date of the tour. this one hints at something happening 3/16/2026 - but it's probably just the last day of the tour.

On social media, including YouTube, the NIN Camp has been uploading snippets that appear to be filmed on VHS camcorders, giving a real Closure vibe to the concert footage.

I'm only able to catch the Washington DC show this time around, and it's going to be a bit of an ordeal to get there and back, but I'm glad to have one more opportunity to catch the show and hang out with some friends.

Man, I remember when Consequence of Sound first came on the scene. The site was something I referred to, with regularity, as "clickbait garbage" - a site that rehashed news, often without credit, with sensationalized headlines meant to capture attention on sites like Google News and other aggregators. It's a credit to the brand that over the years, they've invested in building a publication that features original writing and good old fashioned music journalism.

All that's to say they've just published an article by Spencer Kaufman, who speaks at length with Trent, Atticus, and Peel It Back creative director Todd Tourso, a kind of retrospective on the Peel It Back tour, which launched with nearly zero press, but closed out to universal acclaim. It's a good read, going from the inception of the tour, through the execution - even touching on swapping drummers with the Foos (spoiler alert: this is a drama free zone, happily) - and hinting that there's new NIN in the works.

On Friday, December 5 at around noon Eastern Time, an email went out to the NIN mailing list announcing early access to the With Teeth 20 collection - new clothing and limited edition merch riffing on Rob Sheridan's iconic designs and style for the 2005 album. Creative director John Crawford called out that lots of people were involved - evidenced by Eleanor Kelly's edition-of-two hand-knit, hand embroidered sweater (not commercially available).

If you recall - when NIN toured for [WITH_TEETH], they played a set of tiny west coast venues, which immediately sold out, and then moved up to club venues across the US - which also immediately sold out. Trent was anxious about how relevant Nine Inch Nails was after a six year gap between albums, but the demand was definitely there. In an echo of that misplaced anxiety, even before the collection was publicly available without a password, several of the items had sold out. One item, a pin art collectible in the style of the Only video, was limited to 300, all of which immediately sold. Some jerk in Ottawa has already listed theirs for $499 on eBay, another sold for $349. So it goes.

The Downward Spiral gets a lot of attention - rightly so - but I know that over the years, I've met a ton of people for whom With Teeth was their Downward Spiral. Particularly those who've struggled with addiction, it hits so many resonant notes, and has helped them feel like they're not alone in the challenges they're facing. The album debuted at #1, and had three #1 singles on the modern rock track charts in the US. The Hand That Feeds plays in sports stadiums, I heard a remix of Only blasting out of the Victoria's Secret store in the King of Prussia mall the one time I've been there in the last decade. MP3s were already nipping at the heels of CD sales in 2005, and it's easy to think there wasn't as much of an impact from this album that took NIN in an almost garage-band direction. And I think the rate at which this stuff sold out speaks to that quiet popularity.

I managed to get a shirt for my wife before inventory ran out, and it's showing up this week - but just as NIN came back to play arenas after the club tour, the WITH TEETH 20 collection is now taking pre-orders for most of what's sold out. But don't count on this stuff being there for too much longer. And if you're reading this years later, and want to see what went up on the site - with any luck, merch.nincatalog.com is also still running, and you'll find details on the WITH TEETH era page.

EYES OUT is a collaboration between veteran game designer Cory Davis (who got his start making levels for Doom II & Quake, and lead the development of Spec Ops:The Line, which deconstructs the military shooters that were booming during it's release) and Robin Finck, who needs no introduction. This team has been building out SLEEP AWAKE, a surreal, immersive survival-horror game being published by Blumhouse Games. Yes, that same Blumhouse that you're thinking of.

In the run-up to the December 2 release of SLEEP AWAKE, there are a few online events where you'll get a sneak peek at the score, and have a chance to chat with creative director Robin Finck, who scored the experience. First, on December 1, the eve of the release, NIN:DISCORDANCE is hosting a listening part and a Q&A with Robin. And you can hop into the EYES OUT Discord here to connect with other fans, as well as . A week after the game has been out, Robin will be hosting an AMA on the NIN subreddit. If we're lucky, Charlie Clouser might show up in the comments again.

This trailer includes a snippet of the track Tormentor, exemplary of what to expect from the moody, dramatic original music Robin has contributed to the game. You get another taste of that in the release date trailer, featuring a clip of the piece titled Mercy Shock. The commercially available score clocks in a hair under 60 minutes of atmospheric instrumentals, with rich textures and unsettling ambiance.