THE NIN HOTLINE

"TrReEzNnTor" of the Echoing The Sound people passed along an email from Spectra Entertainment:
www.SpectraEntertainment.com presents the Battle of the Bands. Prizes include $500 cash and 25 hours recording time. Winners in Dallas will recieve recording time at renowned Goodnight Audio Dallas recording studios which keeps such clients as The D.O.C., Dr. Dre and 18% Greyhound's recordings sounding great. Winners in New Orleans will record at none other than Nothing Studios owned by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and John Malm of Nothing Records. We will be in Dallas, Austin, Houston, Ft. Worth. New Orleans, New York, and Chicago in April. Sign up today at www.SpectraEntertainment.com for your chance at winning $500, 25 hours in a platinum studio and a new life.
Good luck to anyone who enters, and please try not to break anything while you're there.

It's not long until the new Tweaker CD, 2 a.m. Wakeup Call, is due out, and Chris is making the rounds with press, large and small, paper and electronic. There have been a lot of brief once-overs, but if you'd like to gain some real insight into the making of the record, check out this interview at Dark Sonus, conducted by Damion (who himself has an enviable studio arsenal). Thanks for the heads up, Damion!

Okay, not really. But kind of, and since we won't be hearing a NIN album until Christmas (notice I didn't say what year, har har!) I figure I have nothing to lose posting random self-referential stuff like this. Right?
Anyway, back in November of 1999, we posted a brief about a hacker fellow on MTV sporting a Further Down the Spiral shirt. Five years later, Marc Maiffret - now co-founder of eEye Digital Security - appears to be holding out just like the rest of us, sporting a NIN shirt in a Newsweek article/interview. Hey, I thought it was cool to see him around again. Good on ya Marc!

Loyal reader Dan tells us:
In the new issue of Revolver magazine, the news section sends a quick message about the upcoming album:
"Trent Reznor is in L.A. with producer Rick Rubin, trying to finish the
fourth NIN record, Bleed Through, which should be in stores by Christmas."
Thanks Dan. Thanks a lot.

Ripped straight from Blabbermouth, while I do tend to avoid posting "nin-spotting" stuff, it's been quiet and I thought this was entertaining.
In the March issue of Sweden's premiere rock/metal magazine Close-Up, SLIPKNOT drummer Joey Jordison talks about playing the song "The Blister" from the band's upcoming album, "Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)", for NINE INCH NAILS mainmain Trent Reznor. "Me and Greg [Fidelman], our engineer, were sitting at the mixing desk listening to this shit. [Producer Rick] Rubin comes down - this is at his house - with Trent and I shake Trent's hand. Rubin tells Greg, 'Why don't you just play that song, let Trent hear it.' I fucking cranked it up, and right after the song, Trent was like, 'Dude, I gotta go lay down, I feel like a pussy now!' It was awesome! That's Trent Reznor right behind me. It was cool. A really, really humbling experience, the fact that he would say something like that about our new record. He's a lovely guy."

Got this in the mail. Not being one to hog stuff, I thought I'd pass it on to you. Get your orders in early...
Waxploitation is pleased to announce that it will offer pre-orders of the new tweaker album "2 am wakeup call", starting Wednesday March 24th at Noon PST.
The first 500 CDs available via pre-order on the Waxploitation.com store will be signed (and numbered) by Chris Vrenna and Clint Walsh.
To place an order, please go to www.waxploitation.com/store
Please note that we have made a number of bundles available as well including CD + t-shirt + stickers, etc.
If you have not visited recently, please check out www.tweaker.net since we've totally updated the interface and skinned it to reflect new album art!
(sorry poe) The album is said to be $12 (USD) when pre-ordered directly from Waxploitation.

Allmusic.com posted a review of the new Tweaker album, 2 A.M. Wakeup Call this weekend, giving some insight in what to look forward to on the April 20th release of the CD.
Perhaps most interesting of all is a pleasantly twisted electronic remake of Tones on Tail's "Movement of Fear" that comes across as sort of a cross between Cocteau Twins and Ministry. Guitarist Clint Walsh contributes significant amounts of musical content here, and he brings a welcome element of organic crunch to Vrenna's sound. Highly recommended.
To read the entire review, follow this link.

SickAmongThePure is going to be celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the release of The Downward Spiral in their April edition. SATP invites all readers to submit 250 words describing how they felt the first time they heard TDS and how it affected them. All entries will be put into a draw for some cool prizes.

Whether or not you've been keeping tabs, the new Tweaker album is due out in a couple of months. Tweaker.net has updated tonight reflecting new artwork and sounds from the up and coming album. Head over there now to check it out!

Apologies to Jordan/Daylight for stealing your headline. We got a lot of email about this Chartattack article, which goes on about Dave Ogilvie's project Jakalope. In brief, Dave Ogilvie and Anthony Valcic (whose names you no doubt recognize if you're a Skinny Puppy fan) are working with the three Dons from The Sons of Freedom, singer Katie B., and a host of guests for the June release of a Jackalope full length on Orange Records out of Toronto.
From the article, While the permanent Jackalope line-up is pretty juicy on its own, it's the guest stars they've recruited for their debut album that will really make they industrial types drool. Ogilvie called in favours from many of his past collaborators who were all happy to join in the Jackalope fun. The mighty Trent Reznor produced, wrote and played on various tracks for the album and Monster Magnet, Jamey Koch (a.k.a. Bob Rock) and S.N.F.U. have also stepped in. Jackalope are still in studio working on the album and Babes In Toyland's Kat Bjelland and members of 12 Rounds and Sikth are also expected to lay down some tracks with the band.
The single is due out in April.

Remember when I begged everyone to vote for us for the Interactive Music Awards last year? I was kind of disappointed when they only posted the winners, and not the top 100 sites like they had in the past.
Well, it turns out sometime between then and now, they posted the top five hundred sites, and The NIN Hotline came in at #11. Considering the last time we tried, we came in at 30 or 40, that's really fucking rad to me. Thanks again for all your support. I don't know if I could live with myself if we showed up lower on the list than richardmarx.com.

March's issue of SickAmongThePure is out, featuring the final installation of Swimming in the Haze, the series on the history of Nine Inch Nails, a commentary on some of the reactions to the new movie, The Passion, and much more!

we have had numerous reports of the dboards being down, but it appears this may just be a server misconfiguration. It seems that nin.com is no longer running on an Apache webserver, but rather is now running on Microsoft IIS. (I know, I know, but I'm sure they have their reasons.) The new 404 error messages are just a matter of the server not being set up correctly.