THE NIN HOTLINE

As reported on NIN.com's "Performance" section, the POPO and Ladytron will be lending support as opening acts on both the European Tour, and the newly announced Japan tour (as had been previously reported below) It seems NIN.com made a mistake, and the supporting bands for the Japan shows are still TBA.

Tickets for the Japan shows go on sale on February 17 for the Toyko shows, March 3 for the Osaka shows, and March 4 for the Nagoya show. Spiral presales begin February 12. Thanks to CEREALMAN and Brian May for writing in.

According to this post on Blabbermouth, Nine Inch Nails' first video for the new album "Year Zero" will be for the track "Survivalism," and filming begins on Monday, February 5. Thanks to Stagger Lee for the excited email.

Devlin wrote in this morning with a link to the Amazon preorder for the Blu-Ray edition of Beside You in Time. At $17.45, it's not much more than the DVD.

Update: The HD-DVD is also available for preorder, also $17.45

As several people have written in to mention, Amazon is taking pre-orders for Beside You In Time (DVD only, so far) for a mere $13.99. Thanks to Paul, Yiyo, stillshadow and Cory for the heads up.

There's a Beside You In Time podcast now available on iTunes. It looks like it contains the same clips that are up on the mini-site. Thanks go out to sleepwalkers for letting us know.

Raf pointed us to this post on Saul Williams' message board, where Saul talks about his new album and working with Trent.

There's an April 9th release date for, well, something on hmv.co.uk. Given the price and proximity to the release date for Year Zero, one can only assume it's the first single from the new album. Thanks to AbjectMisery for letting us know.

Literally 1.52 million people have been emailing us over the last few weeks to let us know that Hollywood's latest remake, Hitcher, features Closer during a cop car chase scene. I'm not posting this to help publicize the film, but to make the emails stop.

There's a new addition to Know the Score: The Frail Variations, the result of a college assignment from last semester. In addition to the Google Video link on the page, you can also check out a less-HQ video of a terrific cellist and a really crappy pianist performing the piece on YouTube and MySpace.


Also available for the first time (in addition to PDFs of the sheet music) is a Sibelius file. By downloading the free Sibelius Scorch software, you can view the score, print parts, transpose the piece, and even change the solo instrument to whatever you happen to play. First person to send in a recording of the Frail Variations on a nose flute wins a prize! OK, not really. But you'd be the coolest person I know.

A buttload of information about the upcoming DVD was just unleashed at a Halo 22 mini-site over on nin.com, including a complete list of cities hosting sneak previews later this month and early next. Check it out!

Rich sent us a link to this Ticketmaster listing for a free NIN DVD screening at "The Middle East" in Cambridge, Mass. The screening is on February 1st, and is an all ages event.

UPDATE: A number of people noted that Slims in San Francisco is having a free advance screening on January 26. Thanks Melissa, Erik, Paul and Ronny.

If you hear about a DVD screening near you, please let us know and we'd be happy to post about it. If we get enough of them, we'll make a nice little page to keep things organized (If nin.com doesn't beat us to the punch, anyway.)

Sayaka wrote in to pass on that NIN will be playing Japan in May, although no specific dates are available yet. Siva followed up with a link to HMV.co.jp that gives a Japanese release date for Beside You In Time - specifically, March 28, 2007.

Amongst a bunch of submission form spam about chinese food and wine, we received a number of emails about Trent's blog on the Spiral - the new NIN album, due out in April, will be called "Year Zero." UPDATE: According to the latest post on Trent's blog at The Spiral, Year Zero will not feature Flavor Flav. Thanks to Cliff for that one.

Also, Amazon.com has created an entry for the Beside You in Time DVD, on track for a February 27, 2007. Thanks to Tom for the heads up!

Kerrang has written up another (smaller) interview with TR about the new album. "The Bluebell Faery" transcribed it on ETS, click here to give it a read.

The UK site play.com is already taking pre-orders for the new NIN album, which is listed for a release date of April 16, 2007. Expect 1000 other websites to follow suit shortly. Thanks to Richey for writing in.

If the album is hitting streets in the UK on April 16 (a Monday), that means it's most likely going to be released in the US on Tuesday the 17th -- proving Meathead to be right as usual.

An update on the current page of nin.com states that final mixing has begun on the new album which has a scheduled release in April. There is also a new photo of the mixing in progress. Thank you to nick for bringing this to our attention.

In the Kerrang article reported below, Trent mentions the possibility of guest vocals on the new album. Greg Reason recently attended Saul Williams' New Year's day show at the Beats on the Beach festival in Australia, and tells us that Saul mentioned at the show "that he has recorded backing vocals for the new NIN album." Saul also performed two tracks from his unreleased, Reznor-produced album, "Convict Colony" and "Revenge," which Greg describes as: "The former had slammin live sounding drums and a looped metal guitar riff while the later was a funkier tune with cool NIN sounding effects."

Finally, Greg also tells us he ran into CX Kidtronik, who confirmed that the sequel to Mr. Self Destruct will be called "Mr. Self Destruct, Part 6."

Shreena wrote in to let us know that a new Kerrang interview with Trent has been transcribed on the Spiral. It has also been posted here on ETS. The interview provides some interesting details about the forthcoming album. Enjoy!

Coincidentally (or is it?) Trent updated his Spiral blog today to announce he has officially begun mixing the new album.